An Absurd Idea: Concert at Altitude
Nov 4th, 2007 by Alex
I was reading Maxim and saw that you can buy an Airbus that seats 900+ passengers for the low hundreds of millions of dollars. Talking to a buddy in the production services industry (read: a company that provides big ass speakers for concerts, among other things), we thought it would be cool to have a concert on an Airbus… in flight. We’d never heard of it being done before.
Picture a cargo plane emptied out. Fit it with a stage, truss, lighting, and a concert-grade audio rig. It would all have to be secured to stay put and be FAA approved. The challenge alone of building in such a space might interest some of the premier staging companies (Mountain Productions, for example). Add sofas, L-shaped couches, recliners, etc. Power would probably be an issue as well, but all in all a cool project to consider.
Sheryl Crow beat us to it four years ago. A much smaller scale audience and without the custom rig. She rode on a commercial United flight, but the concept remains. So much for a completely original idea, however I still think it’d be cool. Now I just need to find someone to be the bank.
Sounds like a pretty cool idea. Would like someone more interesting than Sheryl Crow, however.
Probably too expensive in the long run. Venues on the ground are pretty inexpensive to rent out in the scheme of things.
Laundro: No doubt about it, it would be a very expensive ordeal. Earth-based venues aren’t that cheap, but they probably would be less expensive than this. Corporate sponsors would be necessary to ease ticket cost and even then it’d be rather expensive… but imagine rocking out at 35,000 feet. A bit elitist, yes. Bloody cool, absolutely.