If your idea of luxury air travel is a lukewarm meal and watching a movie minus a cracked screen, then you’ve obviously never flown private. But even the most ardent VIP jet-setter would be impressed when clocking up air miles in this cocktail lounge in the sky.
The ABJ Fusion is the third design concept by Design Q - a company currently developing interiors for BAE’s new Avro Business Jet - and has A-list written all over it. Not only is it estimated at a double dip-defying £7.5m (including the plane itself), its UK-based creators claim the experience will be like that of “a flying limousine”.
And if you ignore the physics and focus on what it offers, this is hard to disprove. Up to 19 passengers can be accommodated in three lounges, each of which has an individual mood lighting system – a change from that mundane yellow beam you use when navigating through a Lee Child.
Any thoughts of long-haul bringing bouts of cramp can be dismissed, too. As long as turbulence holds off, there’s uninterrupted cabin space to roam about in; except for the cockpit, obviously.
And with one of the lounges being fitted with a 50-inch HD television, you can bet in-flight movies will never be the same again. Add to this a cocktail and canapé bar in close proximity and you have the perfect antidote to the penny-pinching low-cost airline tactics that re giving aircraft design a bad rap.
But before BAE can start decking the skies with the ABJ Fusion, Design Q have two other concepts to unveil in early 2011- so don’t plan your holidays just yet.
