Air travel is always looking at new technologies to help pave the way for the future. Here are some of the best breakthroughs of recent years.

New Weather Mapping

Thanks to recent advances in technology, pilots are now able to download detailed weather reports. They correspond to their flight plans too. And back on the ground, teams of people feed updated weather reports up to the pilot throughout the journey. This allows them to make on the spot changes to avoid certain weather conditions that cause potential disasters in the air. This was never possible until very recently, and it’s a significant achievement. It means that we will experience much less turbulence in the air now.

Parts Made by 3D Printing

3D printing is starting to take the world by storm, and this also means it’s taking the air travel industry by storm. Plane manufacturers are now beginning to use a service that includes 3D scanning and printing to make parts for planes in a quick and easy way. This also means that the parts that will make up the plane will be lighter than ever before. This is a big bonus for the environment. That’s because the lighter a plane is, the less fuel will be needed to get the plane off the ground and in the air safely. This change as the potential to truly revolutionise plane building.

Digital Logbooks

Pilots used to have to take huge books and manuals onto every flight with them. The logbooks that pilots have to use to record the details of each and every flight they undertake are no long made from paper though. Thanks to new pilot logbook software, pilots only have to enter their information into a detailed database. This makes the logbook much easier to use and read. And those big manuals have now been replaced by documents that can be stored on tablet devices. It’s a big step in the right direction.

Mobile Phone Boarding Passes

Does anybody really like airports? I know most of us surely don’t. Well, the process of waiting for your flight has just got a little less bothersome. Unfortunately, you probably still have to wait around for a long time. And I can’t promise that delays will stop occurring. But you will be able to board your plane in a quicker fashion. This is thanks to us now being able to use our mobile phones as boarding passes. As long as we have the right technology and are prepared in advance, we can do this. Paper tickets might soon be a thing of the past.

Futuristic Shapes

Not long ago, everyone thought that we’d be ditching cars and flying cars around cities on sky highways. It didn’t quite turn out that way, did it? But don’t despair. The latest planes that are being engineered for air travel by NASA are giving us a little taste of futurism. They are smooth, interesting shapes that have been designed with being aerodynamic in mind. It’s something that will minimise the amount of fuel that will have to be used to get the plane in the sky in the future.