In a moment that brings to mind the 1966 movie Fantastic Voyage, British Air is looking at a plan to feed passengers a pill that’s a miniaturized package of sensors that would tell the airline how to arrange the passenger’s flight environment.
In the film, a submarine crew is miniaturized to perform surgery inside a human body; in British Air’s version, the pill would be one part of a myriad of sensors, including temperature, sleep phase and heart rate, would check the passengers through a flight and manage their sleep times, meals and in-flight entertainment usage.
It would even adjust airline meals based on sttomach acidity. Hard to see how that works when the galley is stocked just with a choice of chicken or pasta!
BA’s patent application calls for the data to be relayed wirelessly from the patient’s body and used to adjust lighting, air conditioning, volume and more. Not easy to do that now, even without a pill!
Incidentally, the picture above is from a company called Proteus, which is also the name of the submarine in Fantastic Voyage!
