I’m sitting in the Sydney Virgin Blue Lounge again. I have about fifteen minutes before I go to board my flight and whilst I don’t really care for the lounge as a nice environment in which to relax I certain appreciate the Internet connectivity. Thinking about it some more I can’t quite figure out why we don’t have Internet access on planes here in Australia.
Is there any technical reason why we can’t? Surely they could come up with a "Seat + Internet" ticket where you pay a premium for the facility (type in the barcode from your boarding pass to activate the service or something).
Hundreds of thousands of Australians spend hours a day on airplanes. Surely the productivity that would result from being able to use phones+internet on the plane (even during take-off/landing) would justify more expendature in this area. I don’t buy for one second that electronics interfere with planes – I wonder if there’s a Mythbusters episode to prove it. If they did, they wouldn’t allow phones in airports. Who needs a gun when I can turn on my MP3 player and destory the plane?
The airline industry is overregulated, union controlled and has too many old farts in the cockpit to realise it’s 2008 and I still can’t blog from the plane.
but like, then you’d be able to communicate with the terrorists.
No expert in this area, but I think the answer is something more like the aircraft don’t use satelite, but instead our crappy and scattered terrestrial networks – so not much point in the airlines providing an internet service that would only last for the first 30 mins of the flight – in which you can’t use any devices anyway…
Check this link out to see what I mean… http://www.aircell.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=312&Itemid=1
I’ve read that a few airlines are piloting (no pun intended) in flight Internet access, along with seat to seat chat capabilities…I couldn’t make this up if I tried.