This beautiful new plane has a feature we've never seen before

pulse

February 14, 2017 3:07 PM

Embraer's Kyoto Airship interior concept features large vertical windows and skylights. The interior option is available on Embraer Lineage 1000 aircraft.

If you are extra bold, however, Embraer's design chief, Jay Beever, will gladly offer you some of his truly over-the-top interior concepts — like the Kyoto Airship and its astonishing skylights ...

Let's be honest. Flying — for most people — means being crammed into a pressurized metal tube with small portholes.

Even large business jets with eight-figure price tags offer very little in terms of natural sunlight.

But now Embraer has come up with a revolutionary interior that's straight out of a sci-fi flick.

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 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 a large jet with a pressurized cabin that cruises at 35,000 feet.

For this new concept, the Embraer executive-jet team drew on the technical specs of an ERJ-145 regional jet, which has large observer windows the company designed for use by the Brazilian government, Embraer's vice president of interior design, Jay Beever, told Business Insider in a 2016 interview.

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 windowsills that allow customers 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 who'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 airplane, we will make it."

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