I was eager to play early adopter and try SAS’s inflight wireless web connection on my flight to New York, and have now done so, only to find an email from a friend saying she was fine after a “tragic attack on London.” This led me to all the news sites, and then to trying to contact my sister in London, hoping for reassuring news.

You can’t use mobile phones on planes yet, but you can sure use Skype if you are connected via SAS’s wifi service$30 for the entire flight (and electric plugs are only for those in Business) or else $10 for an hour + 25c per minute thereafter (my choice).. I tried to Skype out to people’s phones in London but either they were not answering or the phone lines were overburdened (as they were with 9/11). I Skyped dad on the phone to ask about my sister, but he couldn’t hear me over the aircraft noise. Makeshift solution: I instant-messaged a friend (okay, it was Matthew) and asked him to call and report back. It turns out everyone is fine.

Moral of the story: Use a headset if you want to talk to Skype from an airplane (unless you have no qualms about shouting like a hijacker). However, if all you want to do is check if someone is alive, you just need to wait for them to pick up the phone. You can hear them fine.

In other news: SAS, like other airlines, has a little screen in the seat in front that can be made to show a world map with a position of the plane. Post-Google Earth, it is beginning to look decidedly less impressive. It occurred to me that, given internet access on planes, a GPS device and Google Earth on my laptop, you could construct a home-grown replacement that is far more impressive. The only hack you’d need would be somehow manage to link a GPS device’s live position to Google Earth. Can’t be too hard. (In fact, Google should team up with ATi or NVidia to market this to airlines.)

Finally, my row of 8 seats has 5 iPods on it. If that rate is multiplied by 40 rows, there should be around 200 iPods on this flight. Crazy, no?