Embraer designs new aircraft with skylight for your mile-high office
The Embraer design team imagined a hypothetical Japanese customer who may want to sit on the floor. Image: Embraer

Embraer designs new aircraft with skylight for your mile-high office

Benjamin Zhang

Let’s be honest. Flying — for most people — means being crammed into a pressurised metal tube with small port holes. Even large business jets with eight-figure price tags offer very little in terms of natural sunlight.

Now, Embraer has come up with a revolutionary interior that’s straight out of a sci-fi flick.

The Kyoto Airship was thought up by aircraft manufacturer, Embraer. Image: Embraer The Kyoto Airship was thought up by aircraft manufacturer, Embraer. Image: Embraer

With an interior design concept called the Kyoto Airship, Embraer has proposed to outfit its Lineage 1000 business jets with large vertical windows and skylights. The interior is currently available for those who are interested in ordering the company’s $55 million Lineage 1000.

Skylights aren’t new to private aviation. There are 30-year-old Cessnas flying around with skylights. But this is the first time we’ve seen this on large jet with a pressurised cabin that cruises at 10,000 metres.

For this new concept, the Embraer executive jet team drew upon the technical specs of an ERJ145 regional jet, which has large observer windows the company designed for use by the Brazilian government, Embraer Vice President of interior design Jay Beever told Business Insider.

The design proposes vertical windows that will look like this from the outside. Image: Embraer The design proposes vertical windows that will look like this from the outside. Image: Embraer

According to Beever, the Embraer design team imagined a hypothetical Japanese customer who may want to sit on the floor of the aircraft instead of a traditional seat. The Kyoto Airship interior features lower window sills that allow the customer to do so without feeling like they are sitting in a tub.

Although the large vertical windows bathe the cabin in sunlight, the production version of the interior will have to address the fact that all that sun (you’re flying above the clouds after all) could make the cabin very hot.

The company is awaiting the first intrepid customer that’s in the mood for something we’ve never seen before in a business jet.

“We’ve proven to ourselves that we can make this,” Beever said. “And when a Lineage customer is ready to order this aeroplane, we will make it.”

Businessinsider.com.au

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