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.<\/p>\n
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).<\/span>. 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.)<\/p>\n 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?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 … Continue reading