Galley Gossip: Why ring the flight attendant call light when you can send a tweet – and get results!

by Heather Poole on

Recently I wrote a post, Flight attendant pet peeve #6 – the run around, about running the flight attendant ragged in flight. Now I wasn’t complaining about passengers who use their call lights. Not at all. It’s there for a reason. But there is a difference, a very big difference, between having needs and being needy. If you push the button once (or twice), I’d say you have a few needs you’d like to be met. That’s fine. But If you’re using it fifteen times on a three hour flight, you’re a bit needy. And that’s not so fine.

Speaking of having your needs met, this morning I read an interesting article about the power of Twitter in flight. By the way, did you know that I’m on twitter? Of course you may have heard that Oprah’s on twitter. Maybe even you’re on twitter. We’re all on twitter. If you’re not on twitter, perhaps it’s time to change that. Why? I’ll let James A Martin of PC World explain…

You’re on a plane, and you’re hungry. For whatever reason, the flight attendants have overlooked your meal, and now you’re frustrated. What do you do? You tweet about it. Someone from the airline sees your tweet and sends a message to the pilot. The pilot tells a flight attendant that the passenger in seat 3B (or whatever) hasn’t been served and is tweeting about it. And within a few minutes, your meal arrives.

Believe it or not, this scenario actually occurred aboard a Virgin America flight, according to Porter Gale, the airline’s vice president of marketing. Gale relayed the incident at a recent Twitter conference in San Francisco. (Virgin America’s entire fleet is equipped with wi-if networking, which is how the passenger was able to tweet about the missing meal.)

Now I can’t imagine the above scenario happening on board one of my flights, but I’m sure the flight attendant who was notified by the captain that 3B had been skipped couldn’t believe it was happening on her flight either. Why this passenger didn’t ring the call light, I don’t know. Then again, why ring the call light when you can just tweet about it! Tweeting is all the rage right now, especially at 30,000 feet.

A month ago I happened to be at home enjoying a day off, when I logged onto twitter and read a post from Johnny Jet about being on a particular flight, which just so happened to be the flight I normally work from New York to Los Angeles. Quickly I logged onto the flight service website and looked up the crew.

I tweeted back, ‘If you’re sitting in business class on the left hand side of the aircraft you’re in good hands. Your flight attendant is a super stew.”

Johnny Jet responded, “You’re right. Kristen says hi.”

A few weeks later I ran into Kristen who asked, “How did you know that passenger on my flight?”

“I don’t really know him,” I told her. “I mean I do follow his tweets and he did send me a laviator shot (pictured) but I don’t know him-know him! Even though I feel like I do.”

“That’s crazy that you were emailing him while we were in the air,” she laughed.

Not really. Not anymore. Which is why twitter is so amazing.

“Do you tweet in the air?” a twitterer recently asked me.

“Only when I’m commuting to work. Never while I’m at work – working. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be working, would I?” I responded back.

“Do you ever get recognized by passengers in flight from your blog?” someone else tweeted.

“Never!” I typed back. There are a few coworkers who know that I write Galley Gossip, but I’ve never been confronted by a passenger. Though, I must admit, that would be kind of nice.

Photos courtesy of Svacher (computer) and Johnny Jet (Laviator shot)

You can find Gadling on Twitter, as well as the most of the Gadling Team: Mike Barish, Kraig Becker, Catherine Bodry, Alison Brick, Scott Carmichael, Justin Glow, Stephen Greenwood, Aaron Hotfelder, Tom Johansmeyer, Jeremy Kressmann, Heather Poole, Jamie Rhein, Annie Scott, Karen Walrond, Kent Wien, Brenda Yun.

Vote for the worst airline employee ever

by Jamie Rhein on

In all honesty, most airline employees are fine, sensible sorts–stellar even. They are the type that you can count on to get you from here to there with as little fuss and muss as possible. However, there are exceptions and in those cases, the mistakes can be doozies.

Rick Seaney has been keeping track of the airline employee stories that have created head shakes and eye-rolls. The “How stupid can a person be?” stories. These are the six stories he has come up with that are the worst of the bad. Read them and laugh. Or weep. And then vote for which airline employee you think is the worst of the worst. We’ll keep track of what you think.

  • Airline employee who escorts a child to the wrong airplane, thus sends the little darling to the wrong destination. Here’s the latest one of those stories we’ve posted about in the past
  • Baggage handler who falls asleep in the cargo hold and ends up taking off with the plane. The last guy who did this had an unusual ride to Boston from JFK.
  • Pilot who begins slurring his speech during the take-off announcement and scares the heck out of passengers so much that they demand that he return them to the terminal. We caught those details here.
  • Airline employee who helps a friend get a gun on board.
  • Truck driver who drives an airport vehicle across the tarmac in front of moving airplanes.
  • Baggage handler who steals loot from bags and sells bounty on EBay.

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Seany’s ABC News article, along with giving details about each of the mishaps, provides tips on how to avoid these airline employees if you can help it.

Paris Air Show 2009: Video of the new Boeing 787 cockpit window

by Kent Wien on

Yesterday we showed you how passengers on the 787 will have it ‘made in the shade.’ When I first heard about the electrically dimmable window shade feature, I asked Randy Baseler, then VP of marketing at Boeing, whether this type of technology might find its way into the pointy-end of the airplane.

Randy explained back in 2006:

Here is what we can tell you at this point. The flight deck on the 787 does not currently have dimmable windows. The demands of the flight deck are different from those for passenger windows, as would be the technology involved. We’re working hard on coming up with a way to do this in the flight deck, and we’re looking at a solution that might be retrofittable.

So when I saw a 787 window on display at the PPG booth at this year’s Paris Air Show, I just had to know. Will we finally be able to throw out our plastic stick-on shades or, worse yet, a newspaper, map or cabin safety briefing card? Pilots are desperately in need of dark shading on the sunny side of the airplane.

Boeing has in the past decade offered a sliding yellow shade that doesn’t really block much sunlight, and there have been various plexiglass shades previously, but these only supplement the passenger safety briefing cards and newspapers we cram into the window to block us from the sun.

Mark Cancilla of PPG explained that there’s a solar reflective coating on the 787 windows which would help reduce the temperature in the cockpit. He also pointed out the gold tint, caused by the thin-film gold that’s needed for the airplane’s anti-fog system.
I was a bit shocked to see how tinted these windows would be. How would that affect the photos I take from the cockpit at altitude? Looking closer, it seemed the white display behind the window highlighted the gold film, but when looking back toward the show floor this window appeared to be similar to other Boeings.

The anti-fog capabilities of the new windshield will eliminate the need for 50 m.p.h. air to blast across the windows, which will result in less noise.

Let’s let have Mark show you more about the 787 window:

After being awake for nearly 24 hours, Grant and I kept each other in good spirits with a few light hearted comments. When we saw the full size cabin shell for the A350, I noticed the cockpit windows were painted black, A shade that I jokingly found to be perfect on those early morning eastbound flights. Could this be Airbus’s answer to my frustrations?

Check out the rest of Gadling’s Paris Air Show coverage.

Hungarian airline stunt too successful

by Tom Johansmeyer on

A crowd pissed all over Wizz Air’s attempt to release 1,000 balloons into the sky. The low-cost airline had hoped to celebrate its fifth anniversary, but the Hungarian crowd was drawn to the event by the rumor of freebies hooked to the balloons – coupons worth $49.95 – ultimately ruining it for everybody.

The balloons were held in a net in Budapest. Attendees started to pop balloons so they could cash in on the discounts, prompting a burst of bursting. After the first popper struck, the crowd “attacked the net,” according to Wizz Air communications director Natasa Kazmer.

One young woman fished for coupons through a grill in the gutter, hopefully because she planned to take many Wizzes later this year.

The publicity stunt was too successful: most of the vouchers were gone before the press even arrived.

Day in the Cloud goes live at 30,000 feet

by Mike Barish on

Earlier in the month, we told you about Virgin America and Google’s Day in the Cloud Event. And yesterday, I let you know that I would be on board one of the competing flights to take part in the event at 30,000 feet. And that’s exactly where I was this morning as I answered trivia questions, solved puzzles and joined thousands of people on Virgin America flights and on the ground competing to win tons of great prizes. I even tweeted for Gadling during the flight. So, what happens when technology, puzzles and flying intersect? Organized chaos and lots of fun.

I was on flight 921 from LAX to SFO. A competing flight from SFO to LAX was attempting to beat the best score on our flight. But there was one glitch: there were log-in issues when it came time to connect to the gogo in-flight wifi. It seems that there may have been problems with the company that handles the billing for the internet service. So, when a plane-load of people attempted to log into the system simultaneously, a Day in the Cloud became, temporarily, a day at the “still loading” screen.

Eventually, most of the issues were worked out. They even found the bandwidth for Good Day LA to broadcast live on the flight. Reporter Suzanne Marques covered the event and you may even spot me when you watch her segment (Hint: I’m wearing a Gadling t-shirt).

Google created the game and put together a tough contest. I was seated next to professional puzzle designer and competitor Wei-Hwa Huang, who was invited to take the challenge. He seemed to have a much easier time solving the puzzles and finding the answers in Google Apps than I did. His mental gymnastics and fast fingers resulted in the highest score of anyone on the two competing flights, which meant that everyone on Flight 921 walked away with prizes.

What can we learn from the Day in the Cloud? Well, in-flight wifi is here to stay, but, there are still some kinks to work out. For one, gogo sets the pricing for the airlines but they are considering lowering the costs to entice more users. Right now, many people find it too expensive. Also, the 3G network, while reliable, is still glitchy at times, especially if there is a rush of people logging in. However, I was impressed with the overall speed and reliability of the system once things settled down a bit and I’d defiitely utilize the service in the future.

The Day in the Cloud contest is running all day today, so you can still compete at home, in the office or on a Virgin America flight. Remember, though, that when the captain puts on the Fasten Seatbelt sign, that you need to return to your seat, buckle up and put your thinking cap on. My bad jokes, like wifi on Virgin America flights today, are free.