What does the future hold for airlines and airports? Will it be a mixture of Orwell’s 1984 and Blade Runner, with elements of Black Mirror thrown in too?
Watching this video gives us the sensation that landing at Dubai Airport must be as close as you could get to landing at the Imperial capital in Star Wars, where you are greeted by a hologram as you get off the aircraft.
Emirates is considered to be one of the best airlines in terms of flying first class. A flight on one of their “Sheikhs of the Sky” goes way beyond a simple journey from one airport to another, it’s a total experience. Obviously though, this “experience” is not something just anybody can enjoy; a first class flight like the one in the video can cost around 17,000€!
Most of the airports in the Persian Gulf region will become not only luxury infrastructures but also attractive hubs for long distance flights
A huge number of videos like this can be found on YouTube, and they all give you the same sensations: fascination, amazement at the level of luxury, and above all a feeling that this mixture of the latest technology with such ancestral traditions is almost…fictitious.
Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha….none of these are coincidence. All of these cities have one common denominator: petroleum. The dizzying growth of these infrastructures is positioning these airports as hubs between Europe, Asia and Africa. Not only that but they also benefit from extremely low fuel costs at their bases.
Investment in these large infrastructures has also meant high profile professionals are flocking to these countries to work. They are taking part in extremely interesting projects, overcoming some amazing new challenges.
There are no European or American firms among the 10 best airlines of 2013. All 10 are from the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
http://www.airlinequality.com/news/awards2013.htm
The airport rankings, unsurprisingly, show similar results.
The world’s axis seems to be shifting towards the east, and the aviation industry is a clear example of this trend.
Is this the beginning of the future for this type of facility?
