Teague, one of the world’s top design agencies, developed a concept for an airplane called Poppi. The goal of Poppi is to eliminate or improve on many of the bad aspects of air travel while staying within the realm of feasible possibilities.

There would be no baggage issues with Poppi because there would be no baggage allowed on board. All luggage would be checked. There would be small overhead bins called fedora bins, which could only hold a limited number of personal items. This would eliminate about 4,000 pounds from a Boeing 777 cabin structure, which would save millions of dollars of fuel. It was estimated it would also speed up the boarding process by 70 percent.

Poppi’s middle seats are billed as promotional class, where advertisers provide unique experiences to this special seat, such as exclusive in-flight experiences and post-flight giveaways.

Teague also restructured cabins by experience rather than room and location. An example would be a media class, where passengers would be entertained by endless possibilities of special videos, including television premieres, entertainer performances and similar offerings.

They addressed the gate situation by implementing a real-time info system alerting passengers to all relevant boarding information as it develops. This would eliminate much of the confusion at the gate before and during the boarding process.

All of these ideas sound great to me. Some might sound revolutionary while others seem more common sense. While these things may never become a reality, this shows there are possibilities for change and improvement. It’s outside thinking like this which forces change within a system.

— John Wroblewski, online contributor