AN AIRLINE pilot asks air traffic control for permission to make an emergency landing. “One of our passenger seats says its occupant is a shifty character who might be a nervous terrorist,” he says. “We want him off this flight.”
Scoff if you like, but intelligent airline seats might become a reality if work by a British lab pans out. Qinetiq, the UK’s part-privatised defence lab, is moving into civil aviation. Engineers at the lab’s Multifunctional Materials Group in Farnborough, Hampshire, are designing a new generation of seats that could help busy cabin crew judge whether a passenger is a terrorist or potential air-rager, or if they have been sitting still so long they risk developing deep vein thrombosis.
The seats will contain a thicket of pressure sensors that will relay signals to a central computer to assess the seat occupant’s behaviour. Are they asleep? Motionless for too long? Jumpy? Qinetiq designer Chris Thorpe says the system could have a display that is only accessible to the cabin crew – perhaps in the galley – to warn if a passenger’s behaviour is out of the ordinary.
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If they have been asleep or sitting still too long, say, a “DVT Warning” might flash beneath the passenger’s seat number, and a crew member could prompt the passenger to take a walk around the plane. And if the seat reveals the passenger may be in a state of high anxiety, the display can discreetly alert the cabin crew. They can then assess whether the passenger presents a risk: are they simply frightened of flying? An air-rager in the making? Or a hijacker about to make their move? Thorpe says additional sensors and analytical software may one day help the crew to make that judgement, perhaps by monitoring passengers’ temperature or skin moisture levels. Qinetiq is “back-validating its technology against real cases” in a bid to assess the feasibility of this, Thorpe says.
The sensing seats are part of a bigger project to make airline cabins more friendly, with lighting that dims when you fall asleep, for instance. It is expected to bear fruit in about a year, but unless you’re used to turning left when you board a plane, don’t expect to see it soon: first-class passengers will enjoy the benefits first.