Booking

In six years time, hardly anyone will need travel agents to make travel bookings. Well, you don’t even really need one today – unless your travel is complicated with several airlines and multiple cities combined into one travel itinerary. All those point-to-point and regular travels will be easily booked from your mobile device or computer, by yourself and no 3rd party (travel agent, secretary) help needed.

Entertainment

Airports are destinations themselves with shopping, eating, and entertainment facilities built to serve even those not travelling. You can visit international airport just for a quality dinner, shopping, movies or art. As a matter of fact, there are already airport terminals being built, such as Project Jewel at Changi Airport in Singapore.

Waiting

For the international travellers the main airport concern today is the immigration and security checks, which take a lot of time and stress. By 2022 however, there will be much less queuing and idle waiting. Although it is controversial subject, passenger profiling will take much a bigger and transparent role in our future travel. It will take away the extra queues from most of us.

You will be screened (by immigration and security) based on your personal profile; your nationality, race, age, religion, previous travel patterns, countries and cities visited, airlines used, and several other factors. This determines how easily (or not) you can pass through all the checkpoints. All this information will be freely shared within different countries so you should have similar level of ease at airports around the world. For many of us it will just be a quick walkthrough with face recognition gates.

Aboard the Plane

Once aboard the plane, you can expect vastly different products depending on if you’re flying Business or Economy Class. First Class has long since disappeared from international flights with the exception of few Super First Class seats on leading long haul premium airlines such as Etihad, Emirates, and Singapore Airlines. Most airlines now have Premium Economy Class, which is a product between Business Class and Economy Class.

While Business Class is better than today’s First Class, you can find huge entertainment display as part of the seat back structure, (and no longer separate bulky screen), in Economy Class there is no longer seatback screen at all but all entertainment is streamed to your own device. And you no longer need to bring headphones with you as all passengers (regardless of cabin) have their private sound bubble providing a perfect surround sound system for each traveller.

Naturally, there is a super high-speed Internet connection available during the flight, as good as on the ground – and it’s free. You can book your destination restaurants, sports, concert tickets, and anything else you may need prior to your landing. It also recognizes you and your past activities so that you can, for example, continue that movie you started before your flight. And it recommends what to do or watch during the flight, based on your earlier activities.

Passengers in Business Class can expect to have even better comfort than today with full bed-like seats. In Economy Class, the seats have finally been developed to be much more comfortable than today. While the floor space of each seat has not increased (airlines still want to put as many seats into the plane as possible), new ergonomic design enables us to have better seating posture and thus more leg space. Companies like as AirGo Design have brought Economy Class seat comfort into the 21st century with new hi-tech innovations such as 3D body scanning seat design, self-cleaning nanotechnology, seat materials, and multi-density seat paddings reducing negative effects of long haul travel as well as keeping the seats sanitized.

After Landing

Your journey from the aircraft to your hotel (or home) is a breeze. Your immigration details have already been transferred from your departure airport to your destination immigration officials. You’ll have an autonomous car (which you hailed just before landing) waiting for you at the designated door without waiting in taxi queues.

Are you ready to book World Cup 2022 tickets and your flights to Qatar?