This article was originally published in Dutch in 2016 and has been translated and updated in October 2026.
Technology has the potential to make the world a much smaller place. Let’s dust off our crystal ball and take a look at the future of travel. Electric flight, pilotless aircraft and travelling the world ‘by tube’. What big ideas are out there, and do they stand a chance of succeeding?
Eco-friendly electric flight
There is plenty of experimentation going on with electric aircraft. When this article was first written in 2016, however, they could only keep up high speeds for short periods. They also face the same problem as electric cars: batteries cannot yet supply energy for long enough. Unfortunately, that is the flip side of the eco-friendly coin. We are waiting for better batteries, so electric flight requires a little more patience. At the time, a great deal of work was going into car batteries that would take you well over 1,000 kilometres on a single charge instead of around 300.
Giant aircraft with self-healing wings
The ‘Sky Whale’ concept aircraft looks a bit like a cross between a tropical fish and a space shuttle. This design concept is many times larger than the Airbus A380 and promises lower fuel consumption, less drag and less noise. It has three passenger decks, each with a viewing platform. The gigantic aircraft would be made of advanced materials and even has self-healing wings covered in micro solar cells.
No more aircraft windows, but interactive screens
In the aircraft of the future, designers imagine there will be no windows at all. Windows create drag, which means higher fuel consumption and lower flight speeds. The small oval windows would make way for interactive panels that show you what is happening on the ground below the aircraft, or let you look up into space. These screens could also display interesting flight information.
Read also: The future of commercial aviation: viewing platforms and self-healing wings (in Dutch)
Will we soon be flying without pilots?
Flights are already highly automated. In 2016 it was often said that pilots actually fly their aircraft by hand for only a few minutes per flight. Passengers, however, find it important that there is a pilot in the cockpit who is in control of the flight and can step in at crucial moments. But given the potential savings, not only financially but also for the environment, pilotless flight looks like only a matter of time.
SpaceX - the commercialisation of spaceflight
According to SpaceX boss Elon Musk, the successful landing of the Falcon 9 rocket in December 2015 was an important step towards more affordable commercial spaceflight. The rocket was launched, went into space and then landed vertically without damage. This was not a test mission but a commercial rocket that put satellites into orbit. The whole mission was filmed from a helicopter, and at the time there were already various plans to travel to Mars with SpaceX.
By tube to Barcelona
The Hyperloop, another ingenious idea from Elon Musk’s circle, is a sealed, near-vacuum tube above ground in which special capsules would carry you at 1,200 kilometres per hour; a kind of pneumatic tube post that, according to its promoters, could take you from Amsterdam to Barcelona in twenty minutes. In 2016, construction of a first short test route of 8 kilometres in California was announced for that year. Supporters even claimed that a ticket for such a tube ride from Amsterdam to Barcelona would cost no more than 20 euros. If those promises came true, the Hyperloop would become a serious competitor to regional air travel. A decade on, these were and remain bold promises rather than reality, so treat them as a snapshot of the optimism of 2016.