Flying over the Pacific there’s not really anything to see out the window, but I did appreciate having a window. On the way there I was in the middle of the plane and with a monitor in the back of the seat in front of me so I could watch movies. One of the channels was the view from a camera mounted on the fusilage, so we’re already halfway to that. I can’t imagine being in that big tube with 400 other people for 20 hours with no windows.
I love being on a night flight. Even when flying over the desert West, there are amazing clusters of lights. You can play a game following along on the map. It’s lots of fun. 
I’m a little surprised it took so long for someone to mention this. External camera views on the personal entertainment system (LCD screen embedded in the seat in front of you ) are common on several airlines. Although considering the abysmal service and entertainment on American airlines, I’m not surprised they don’t have anything like that yet. On JAL, you can chose from a number of view, from straight below to pilot’s view. It pretty much sucks, though. On the other hand, some of the most beautiful and unreal things I’ve seen in my life – ice as far as the eye can see on the Bering Sea, Chicago at night, looking down on mount Fuji or Popocatepetl – was from an airplane window.
The windows are rounded at the corners instead of squared off to prevent cracking due to constantly pressurizing/depressurizing.
Not many lights from Vancouver to Hong Kong.
Say what? Look at the stars. I’ll bet there are over a million of them. At 7 miles above the surface the view is spectacular.
In fact, airlines generally announce that the window blinds must all be up as the plane heads in for a landing (along with seatbelts fastened, and seat backs and tray tables in full upright positions) and my understanding is that this is a safety precaution intended to help keep the passengers oriented in the event everyone has to get off the plane quickly in an emergency.
I don’t recall seeing any stars, at all, during the 3 or 4 times I made the journey. I recall blackness only.
The public clearly wants windows. So much so that ‘flying wing’ or blended-body airliners which have been proposed, and which would be able to haul huge numbers of passengers, aren’t built for the simple reason that they would have no windows, and people are terrified to fly in them.
Being able to see outside is very important to people in general. Even if you’re not sitting by the window, having the plane lined with windows makes the cabin seem less claustrophobic for many.
Windows in general offer no structural advantages, and often come at great cost. Office buildings would be much cheaper to make if we could just build them without windows. And you’d never have to hire people to clean those windows, either. But people want windows.
Likewise, we could make airplanes more efficient if we just strapped people into racks like slabs of beef. People tend to not like that very much. And we could pack a lot more people into an office if we just put them in rows of long tables like a cafeteria. Surprisingly, there is resistance to this idea. We also don’t need interior plants, high ceilings, open atriums, courtyards, and all kinds of things. And houses are incredibly wasteful. We should take a lesson from the old communist countries and provide housing for everyone made out of cinder block rectangles with efficient, square apartments.
This made me laugh. My inital response was, “If I was in a submarine screaming through the air at 500 MPH, over 6 miles in the air, I’d be crapping myself too.”
I realize I was conflating your points, but thanks for the smile.
One of my earliest memories was the first time I flew.
I was probably five.
My parents graciously gave me the window seat.
IT BLEW MY FARKING MIND.
Here I was, looking down on clouds. It was so beautiful. That memory has stuck with me until today.
Planes have windows so people can see what a freaking miracle it is that humans can not only traverse the world in mere hours, but also see the clouds from the top. Damn anyone who says differently.
I would totally love this…I have so often sat in my seat watching that little positioning map thingy and wished they had a nose mounted camera so that I could see what the pilots could see. Would be great fun for landings also
Mostly when I fly, there is nothing to see out the windows - we are too far up or there is almost total cloud cover, and then the damn things are too small to be really useful anyway. But I do like to look
The first time I ever flew trans-Atlantic I watched the sunrise from the window. The light evolved in a perfect, ever expanding triangle. It was a majestic manifestation of the cosmic relationship. Since then I have flown trans-Atlantic many times but the sunrise has been very disappointing compared to what I witnessed on that first journey. I’ll always hope to see it that way again.
Thank God (and Boeing) for the windows! The memory will never disappear.
Huh, I wonder if there is too much cabin noise to see it. When I fly above he cloudes at night I see them but I have very little light in the cockpit.
Henderson the Rain King
Saul Bellow
If there were no windows, I would guess there would be a lot more airsickness, as it is due mostly to a disconnect between when the eyes see and what the middle ear feels. The windows allow a view of the horizon, which corresponds to the motion felt in the inner ear. Take that away, and the resulting disorientation results in nausea.
As for cameras and display screens, are these cameras located inside the plane, or outside the plane? If they are outside the plane, they will cause drag and inefficiency, as well as exposure to damage. If they are inside, they will have to be behind some kind of transparent panel that permits a view outside the plane, what is that called now?
I don’t know if you’re asking this in the hypothetical but like I wrote earlier, some companies, notably JAL, already have these cameras installed. You can see the view from below, tail, wings, and pilot’s view. From what I can read, the cameras are standard equipment on some planes such as the Boeing 777. They’re called Ground Maneuver Camera System and they’re mounted inside the plane. You can see a poor picture from the outside here. Normally they’re used by the pilot to check things like gears but some airlines pipe the signal to the personal entertainment systems.
Ok, I was obviously not clear here. I am not saying that windows in the fuselage provide no obstacles vis a vis the structural integrity of an airplane. What I am saying is that the task of designing proper windows in a fuselage is a mostly trivial problem for today’s passenger aircraft manufacturers, especially the likes of Boeing or Airbus.
For a parallel, the design of the wings obviously must take into account greater stresses and fatigue cycles than the fuse. We don’t often have a problem with wings breaking off, either.
Thus, I submit that the benefits, as stated by others in this thread, far outweigh the negligible difficulty of adding windows to planes, and that the OP’s concerns about windows are either solved or irrelevant as a design issue in today’s aircraft. In short, it’s the same as worrying about having ventilation holes in your disc brakes – in theory, your brakes are more likely to fail (Due to the rotor breaking, please don’t be a smartass and point out that vents reduce heat), but in practice, it’s not an issue you need to be concerned about.
Also, what he said:
Someone once linked to this photo-essay from the Boston Globe in a thread on this board, and I’ve kept the bookmark ever since:
(The really good stuff starts at three pictures down.)
There are more problems with blended-wing designs than just the lack of windows. For one, the farther from the aircraft centerline you sit, the more up or down motion you experience when the plane banks into a turn. There’s a point at which the stomach-in-the-throat feeling would be unacceptable for passengers.
I’d love to be on a plane with external cameras, too. I like to have some sense of where I am in the world. When I’m on a plane that’s descending to a landing, I try to pick up some landmarks so I know where I am, which way to look for the best views, which way we’ll be turning on approach, that sort of thing. The view out the side windows is very restricted. A choice of camera views would be a little better. One of the great things about flying a small plane is to really see where you are.
United has a channel on the headphones to listen to the pilot’s radio. Do you ever use that? I’m almost surprised they allow it. Any comfort you may receive from the idea of infallible pilots may not survive close scrutiny.
I’ve been on a lot of flights when there was hardly anything worth seeing. And I’ve been in the wrong place, too. (Four or five times I’ve been through Chicago, and always on the wrong side of the plane to see the city. Missed a good view of Niagara Falls once, too.) But every now and then it’s worth it. One of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen was a thunderstorm at night over Montana. It would be pitch black, and then the clouds would glow and flicker for a few seconds. Amazing.
Great link, MEBuckner, thanks.