 What if you could pay extra on your next flight to make it feel more like a cruise ship, with access to a daycare, a co-working space, or a full restaurant and bar? For most people, flying is terrible. But the next level of flying might be modular cabin experiences, ones that are loaded onto the plane in between flights and are supposed to be accessible to everyone. Here we go! This is Transpose. It's a modular cabin project that Airbus has been developing inside its Silicon Valley labs called AQED. The engineers in the project are taking inspiration from cargo planes and applying the same loading and unloading concept to passenger planes. Cargo planes, like the kind used by shipping companies, often load and unload cargo using giant pallets that are moved throughout the aircraft on rollers. The minds at Airbus think that you could replace that cargo with an experience. The idea being it could both improve travel for consumers and give the airlines and other brands opportunities to charge them for it. Now this isn't a real plane. It's a mock-up in the labs. But it's modeled after the Airbus A330. Jason Chua, one of the Transpose executives who previously worked on Motorola's modular phone project, gave me a tour of the plane. So we are boarding through the door four area and we're going to enter the plane from the rear. So this first experience that we're entering is a sleeping area. Unlike business class right now, it takes up a lot of room. We're actually stacking four people vertically, which makes it a lot more financially viable. Another thing that Airpoint cabins today aren't really designed for is traveling in groups of friends or sports teams or just with families with young kids. This is a place where families can really spend some good time together. These seats actually flip down and creates this large open space for kids to sit down and play with trucks and stuff like that. So this is our restaurant area. In flight this looks like a cocktail table, but for taxi takeoff and landing, just grab this, flip it down, and you can sit down and buckle in. You can imagine that you can grab a cup of coffee from our restaurant and come back here and take a seat and get some work done. It's kind of crazy to think that we might have these really cool pods before we have really consistent working Wi-Fi in airplanes. Airbus has imagined other scenarios for a modular cabin that we didn't get to try firsthand. Sometimes like a cycling studio or a day spa or a name brand coffee shop. And they're experimenting with state of the art 3 millimeter OLED displays that would act as windows showing a cotton candy sky while you're actually trapped in a metal tube. All of this might make you think that this will inevitably be something that only the rich can afford. But Chua says that while the airlines will ultimately determine pricing, Airbus imagines these experiences will be priced at the premium economy level if they're able to maintain the same seating density. He also says he thinks people will use the modules like they do on a cruise ship, roaming freely around the plane. We want to make flying feel more human. So this could be your office or co-working space. The restaurant could be any nice restaurant. And so we want people to feel more at home when they fly rather than like they are trying to fit into something that's not been designed for them. So I've done a lot of hands-on videos before, but I'll say this. I've never done a hands-on with a plane, at least until now. The engineers let me help load one of the modules onto the aircraft. You know, you're just loosening it. I've got it. It doesn't look like you have much room to go through there. I say this like I know. In order to load a module onto the plane, they're partly relying on the existing infrastructure from a cargo aircraft. But they removed the ball mat and rollers that are normally used, saving about a ton of weight in the process. Instead, they embedded eight air casters into the module. These are built to withstand up to 16,000 pounds, which is well within the maximum weight of a fully loaded 10,000 pound module. And all of this is happening remarkably fast, at least in the labs. The TransPost team claims they can swap out an entirely new module in well under an hour. Right now, aircraft take about 30 days to do a change of a cabin. We're trying to take that customization period from 30 days to about 30 minutes. So we're actually targeting about 15 minutes per module at this point. How can you be sure that everything is safe and secure and sealed in that amount of time? We're actually using proven engineering connections. So seat track attachments, which is what connects our current seats to the aircraft, we're using those same exact connection points. We're using the same exact processes that cargo aircraft use for loading onboard an aircraft. And so we're trying to reuse a lot of this existing work and only change the things that we want to change, like the experiences and the way that the cabin is architected. That doesn't mean the TransPost team has it all figured out just yet. There are still other safety and design aspects to consider. Things like the placement and accessibility of oxygen masks, how quickly it will take people to get into their seats if there's turbulence, or even how doors might be designed differently in a modular cabin. We've got an additional floor structure that's on top of something that wasn't meant to handle that additional floor structure. Even though it's a really small floor structure, about two inches, you have to handle that two inches slope down to the actual door. Trying to solve something to where you're not taking up any existing cabin interior space is something that we're kind of still in the process of brainstorming. Another element the TransPost team has had to consider is the human element. How will people move throughout the plane if they're allowed to wander around? Will people argue or gripe even more than they do on planes now? In December, we did a test at Chrissy Field where we did a very low resolution flight with 66 passengers on board. It showed us some really interesting stuff. One is that if you don't tell people what's on board an airplane, everyone kind of knows what the learned behavior is. You go in and you sit in your seat. What we found was that slowly people started getting up and kind of going to the bar or restaurant. And soon people got the idea that, oh, we don't have to stay in our seats. There's actually reasons to get up and move around. It also showed us that, yeah, when you have a lot of passengers moving around, it is a different experience. But applying some simple traffic rule type ideas, passengers can quickly figure out how to kind of navigate the cabin in a new way. Even if Airbus gets the modules perfectly engineered and thinks it has come up with the right guidelines for human interaction, there's still another big hurdle to consider. Approval from the FAA and international regulators. Is it realistic to think this could be in the skies within the next couple of years? Absolutely. So, of course, our number one priority of this project is safety. We've had lots of good conversations with both FAA and EASA around how we could get this thing flying. And we've gotten some really good feedback from them about how we can get this thing flying in the next couple of years. But that may be an aggressive timeline, according to one analyst I spoke to. Even though it is only an interior concept, FAA regulations are incredibly strict, and there's usually a lot of back and forth between the administration and manufacturers when it comes to a new project. The FAA wouldn't comment on this specific project, but told me that the certification process can range from less than one year to more than five years, depending on the applicant's experience and the complexity of the project. At the very least, Airbus certainly has a lot of experience building planes. It's an ambitious concept when you consider the engineering that goes into it, the potential regulatory hurdles, and the fact that most airlines only change their cabins every seven to ten years. Even if it does get approval, there's still the economics to consider. But Airbus thinks if it does take off, that it can eliminate the downtime that's required for customizable cabins, which means more money for the airlines. There's also the possibility it could make flying a lot less onerous for people. And really, who wouldn't want that?
 What if you could pay extra on your next flight to make it feel more like a cruise ship, with
 access to a daycare, a co-working space, or a full restaurant and bar?
 For most people, flying is terrible.
 But the next level of flying might be modular cabin experiences, ones that are loaded onto
 the plane in between flights and are supposed to be accessible to everyone.
 Here we go!
 This is Transpose.
 It's a modular cabin project that Airbus has been developing inside its Silicon Valley
 labs called AQED.
 The engineers in the project are taking inspiration from cargo planes and applying the same loading
 and unloading concept to passenger planes.
 Cargo planes, like the kind used by shipping companies, often load and unload cargo using
 giant pallets that are moved throughout the aircraft on rollers.
 The minds at Airbus think that you could replace that cargo with an experience.
 The idea being it could both improve travel for consumers and give the airlines and other
 brands opportunities to charge them for it.
 Now this isn't a real plane.
 It's a mock-up in the labs.
 But it's modeled after the Airbus A330.
 Jason Chua, one of the Transpose executives who previously worked on Motorola's modular
 phone project, gave me a tour of the plane.
 So we are boarding through the door four area and we're going to enter the plane from the
 rear.
 So this first experience that we're entering is a sleeping area.
 Unlike business class right now, it takes up a lot of room.
 We're actually stacking four people vertically, which makes it a lot more financially viable.
 Another thing that Airpoint cabins today aren't really designed for is traveling in groups
 of friends or sports teams or just with families with young kids.
 This is a place where families can really spend some good time together.
 These seats actually flip down and creates this large open space for kids to sit down
 and play with trucks and stuff like that.
 So this is our restaurant area.
 In flight this looks like a cocktail table, but for taxi takeoff and landing, just grab
 this, flip it down, and you can sit down and buckle in.
 You can imagine that you can grab a cup of coffee from our restaurant and come back here
 and take a seat and get some work done.
 It's kind of crazy to think that we might have these really cool pods before we have
 really consistent working Wi-Fi in airplanes.
 Airbus has imagined other scenarios for a modular cabin that we didn't get to try firsthand.
 Sometimes like a cycling studio or a day spa or a name brand coffee shop.
 And they're experimenting with state of the art 3 millimeter OLED displays that would act
 as windows showing a cotton candy sky while you're actually trapped in a metal tube.
 All of this might make you think that this will inevitably be something that only the
 rich can afford.
 But Chua says that while the airlines will ultimately determine pricing, Airbus imagines
 these experiences will be priced at the premium economy level if they're able to maintain
 the same seating density.
 He also says he thinks people will use the modules like they do on a cruise ship, roaming
 freely around the plane.
 We want to make flying feel more human.
 So this could be your office or co-working space.
 The restaurant could be any nice restaurant.
 And so we want people to feel more at home when they fly rather than like they are trying
 to fit into something that's not been designed for them.
 So I've done a lot of hands-on videos before, but I'll say this.
 I've never done a hands-on with a plane, at least until now.
 The engineers let me help load one of the modules onto the aircraft.
 You know, you're just loosening it.
 I've got it.
 It doesn't look like you have much room to go through there.
 I say this like I know.
 In order to load a module onto the plane, they're partly relying on the existing infrastructure
 from a cargo aircraft.
 But they removed the ball mat and rollers that are normally used, saving about a ton
 of weight in the process.
 Instead, they embedded eight air casters into the module.
 These are built to withstand up to 16,000 pounds, which is well within the maximum weight
 of a fully loaded 10,000 pound module.
 And all of this is happening remarkably fast, at least in the labs.
 The TransPost team claims they can swap out an entirely new module in well under an hour.
 Right now, aircraft take about 30 days to do a change of a cabin.
 We're trying to take that customization period from 30 days to about 30 minutes.
 So we're actually targeting about 15 minutes per module at this point.
 How can you be sure that everything is safe and secure and sealed in that amount of time?
 We're actually using proven engineering connections.
 So seat track attachments, which is what connects our current seats to the aircraft, we're using
 those same exact connection points.
 We're using the same exact processes that cargo aircraft use for loading onboard an
 aircraft.
 And so we're trying to reuse a lot of this existing work and only change the things that
 we want to change, like the experiences and the way that the cabin is architected.
 That doesn't mean the TransPost team has it all figured out just yet.
 There are still other safety and design aspects to consider.
 Things like the placement and accessibility of oxygen masks, how quickly it will take
 people to get into their seats if there's turbulence, or even how doors might be designed
 differently in a modular cabin.
 We've got an additional floor structure that's on top of something that wasn't meant to handle
 that additional floor structure.
 Even though it's a really small floor structure, about two inches, you have to handle that
 two inches slope down to the actual door.
 Trying to solve something to where you're not taking up any existing cabin interior
 space is something that we're kind of still in the process of brainstorming.
 Another element the TransPost team has had to consider is the human element.
 How will people move throughout the plane if they're allowed to wander around?
 Will people argue or gripe even more than they do on planes now?
 In December, we did a test at Chrissy Field where we did a very low resolution flight
 with 66 passengers on board.
 It showed us some really interesting stuff.
 One is that if you don't tell people what's on board an airplane, everyone kind of knows
 what the learned behavior is.
 You go in and you sit in your seat.
 What we found was that slowly people started getting up and kind of going to the bar or
 restaurant.
 And soon people got the idea that, oh, we don't have to stay in our seats.
 There's actually reasons to get up and move around.
 It also showed us that, yeah, when you have a lot of passengers moving around, it is a
 different experience.
 But applying some simple traffic rule type ideas, passengers can quickly figure out how
 to kind of navigate the cabin in a new way.
 Even if Airbus gets the modules perfectly engineered and thinks it has come up with
 the right guidelines for human interaction, there's still another big hurdle to consider.
 Approval from the FAA and international regulators.
 Is it realistic to think this could be in the skies within the next couple of years?
 Absolutely.
 So, of course, our number one priority of this project is safety.
 We've had lots of good conversations with both FAA and EASA around how we could get
 this thing flying.
 And we've gotten some really good feedback from them about how we can get this thing
 flying in the next couple of years.
 But that may be an aggressive timeline, according to one analyst I spoke to.
 Even though it is only an interior concept, FAA regulations are incredibly strict, and
 there's usually a lot of back and forth between the administration and manufacturers when
 it comes to a new project.
 The FAA wouldn't comment on this specific project, but told me that the certification
 process can range from less than one year to more than five years, depending on the
 applicant's experience and the complexity of the project.
 At the very least, Airbus certainly has a lot of experience building planes.
 It's an ambitious concept when you consider the engineering that goes into it, the potential
 regulatory hurdles, and the fact that most airlines only change their cabins every seven
 to ten years.
 Even if it does get approval, there's still the economics to consider.
 But Airbus thinks if it does take off, that it can eliminate the downtime that's required
 for customizable cabins, which means more money for the airlines.
 There's also the possibility it could make flying a lot less onerous for people.
 And really, who wouldn't want that?