AN AIRLINE pilot asks air traffic control for permission to make an emergency landing. “One of our passenger seats says its occupant is a shifty character who might be a nervous terrorist,” he says. “We want him off this flight.”
Scoff if you like, but intelligent airline seats might become a reality if work by a British lab pans out. Qinetiq, the UK’s part-privatised defence lab, is moving into civil aviation. Engineers at the lab’s Multifunctional Materials Group in Farnborough, Hampshire, are designing a new generation of seats that could help busy cabin crew judge whether a passenger is a…
