Since the beginning of time, man has looked with longing at birds in the sky. It took about a thousand years to fulfil this dream- from the time of Abbas ibn Firnas in the 9th century - who managed to make short hops into the air - to the Wright Brothers, Wilbur and Orville in 1903, who finally managed to fly -covering a distance of 852 feet in 59 seconds. Just sixty-six years later in July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin flew a distance of 380,000 km in 3 days, 3 hours, 49 minutes and stepped on to the moon. Thirty seven years later NASA�€™s New Horizons mission to Pluto took 8 hours, 35 minutes to cover the same distance- though it did not actually make a landing on the moon, but continued towards its destination 4.3 billion km away.

I recently read about an aeroplane that has been made by printing it out on a 3-D printer using plastic and nylon materials. What makes it even more amazing is that the whole aircraft could be assembled without tools in minutes, as the parts are attached together by snap fit techniques rather than nuts and bolts or glue. So far, the plane has only flown on autopilot, without a human pilot in its cockpit. However this can change very soon.

At a time when there is speculation about tourists going for weekend holidays into space, living in intergalactic hotels and spending their time looking for black holes- much in  the way in which tourists today search for the elusive black panther - it is interesting to consider where aviation is headed. There are many different trajectories that this could take.

The most discussed option is the personal air vehicle or �€œflying cars�€ that could travel on roads but also take to the air when traffic got too heavy or roads were not available. Prototypes of such vehicles have been around for a number of years, but so far have not gone into mass production because of cost and safety issues.  However, much work is going on in this field and there is speculation that a couple of flying cars are nearly in marketable stage.  Given the growing popularity of electric cars in recent years, an electric flying car may well be on the cards, with propellers saving energy and charging the batteries on decent.

However, some of the biggest innovations are likely to be found in the field of commercial aviation. As passengers are getting more and more environment conscious, they want cleaner and greener aeroplanes that are less noisy, more energy efficient but also take them to their destination faster. Airbus has announced the possibility of launching a transparent plane that runs on solar energy by 2050, thus doing away with the scramble for window seats for a view. Whether or not this will make one feel safer in the air remains to be seen.

The big question remains whether we go for smaller planes that land closer to one�€™s final destination, or larger ones that carry thousands of passengers into regional hubs. This approach will change the kind of airports that we need to build and the infrastructure that will be required. That the speed of planes is going to increase dramatically by approaching the speed of sound in the future is not a question; the question is whether they are really going to make the experience more enjoyable for the traveller.

But what happens beyond the horizon, beyond the time that it is clear that planes, airports and long waits between flights are bound to be a part of life. Is there the possibility that nano-technology and/or genomics change our views about flight and flying completely? Is there a possibility that humans grow wings and fly on their own, rather than in a vehicle, whatever its kind? Or maybe the idea that ibn Firnas had in the 9th century of attaching a pair of wings to his body to enable him to fly is the direction that we are likely to go in.