Block on in-flight Internet phone calls bypassed – for now

by Scott Carmichael on

When airlines (slowly) started introducing in-flight Internet access to their flights, they were very quick to point out that “VOIP calls” would not be possible. VOIP stands for “Voice over Internet Protocol”, and basically means making phone calls over the Internet. All popular VOIP applications like Skype and Vonage have been blocked.

The airlines, and the provider behind the service obviously do not want a plane full of people chatting on the phone, yelling loudly about how they just made a fortune on the stock market. The other reason is of course because each flight only has a limited amount of data to share between all the passengers. If half the plane suddenly starts calling their aunts and uncles, regular web browsing would become impossible when all the bandwidth is sucked up by phone chatter.

Of course, when you tell people they can’t do something, their natural response is to see how they can prove you wrong. It took a week, but the block on VOIP calls has been successfully bypassed. By using a web service called Phweet, passengers have been able to make phone calls to their friends. The system only works with people who have a Twitter account, but it’s better than nothing. Of course, now this workaround has been published, it will only be a matter of time before the fun comes to an end, and the creative minds will have to find another working solution.

(Source: Wired)

Flight attendants to become the porn police

by Jamie Rhein on

Back in December, when Aaron posted about the etiquette questions raised by In-flight Internet, he wrote the prevailing thought was that “decency, good sense and normal behavior” would prevail.

According to this article at FoxNews.com, just in case decency, good sense and normal behavior go out the window, flight attendants will become the porn police.

I imagine that while the flight attendant is taking your money for your snack and beverage that used to be complimentary, but isn’t anymore, he or she can give a peek at your screen to see what you’re surfing and shut you down if you forget you’re not in the comfort of your own home or tucked back in your office cubicle.

If your neighbor is getting grossed out or upset by your viewing, the flight attendant will appear to put an end to the shenanigans.

Some airlines, the article reports, will put a block on sites which should give the attendants a break so they can do other important tasks like make sure they give back correct change when you purchase water so you won’t die of thirst before the flight ends.

Airlines that either do or will filter sites when Internet is made available: JetBlue Airways, Continental and Qantas.

Airlines that will or already do let you surf without a filter, and hope that you use common sense when you do so: Northwest, American, Delta, Alaskan Airlines and Virgin.

Here are concerns being raised: What is pornography or not appropriate content and under what circumstances? Different people have different lenses with which they view what is appropriate. Here are two examples given:

  • A child sitting next to a person watching an R-rated movie that is either sexually explicit or violent
  • A person surfing a Victoria Secret lingerie catalog could be disconcerting as well.

As the article also points out, the reason why these issues are felt so strongly when people fly is that they are confined and can not escape from what is distasteful. You can’t move seats and you can’t get off.

Although flight attendants are trained to deal with conflict, as you may have noticed if you read Gadling comments whenever a flight issue is posed, there are a lot of stresses from flying as it is. It seems to me that Internet may be great to have, but could be adding more trouble than it’s worth.

Emergency landing for Ryanair and 16 passengers in hospital

by Abha Malpani on

A Ryanair flight from Bristol to Barcelona had to make an emergency landing in France because its cabin lost pressure. It had to plunge 8000 meters immediately in order to reach a level where the air was breathable.

The sudden drop scared many passengers on the flight to the extent that they thought they were going to die; apparently they were not informed of what was happening until 30 minutes into the incident. Also, there’s an argument going on between a passenger and Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary about whether all the oxygen masks were working properly or not.

Fortunately, other than the lack of communication and hiccups with the oxygen masks, reports say that the landing was smooth. No fatal injuries, however 16 passengers were taken to hospital complaining of ear problems.

There’s an interesting report in the Telegraph that emphasises how losing cabin pressure can be fatal. Once this happens on board, pilots have 30 seconds to put their masks on to then make the plane land immediately. Any problems with this can lead to the pilots losing consciousness.

This has happened a few times over the last decade, the worst of which was an incident that happened 3 years ago resulting in a Boeing 737 crashing in Greece and all passengers onboard dying. The history of other such incidents can be found here.

Video of 747 struck by lightning

by Grant Martin on

It’s nice to know that if your 747 gets struck with 40 kiloamperes of electricity that it can keep on trucking. Aircraft are designed to withstand lightning strikes (if not multiple lightning strikes), although various small amounts of damage can occur. As one 747-400 pilot at the Professional Pilots Rumor Network (pprune) commented, “the auto-pilot dropped out and a few minor systems were temporarily lost” after a lightning strike on his aircraft, but shortly after that everything resumed.

Lightning strikes happen fairly often on commercial aircraft, but rarely is the event caught on film. This ANA 747 was hit just after take off, which can be a critical time during operation, but everyone and the aircraft survived just fine.

To save weight, airline removes life vests

by Grant Martin on

In an attempt to cut as much weight as possible from their aircraft, Jazz Airlines, a subsidiary of Air Canada, recently decided to pull all life vests from their aircraft. Now, in the unlikely event of a water landing, passengers will be advised to use their floating seat cushions for buoyancy.

Will this affect the safety of the passengers? Well, purely from the flotation standpoint, life vests have an advantage in that they don’t need to be held onto, which can be tough to do when you’re in ice-cold Canadian water. They also help the passenger’s body face upward, out of the water versus the opposite position that holding a seat cushion would require (an article on TheStar has better diagrams). But government regulators don’t require one or the other.

How much do these life vests weigh? About a half kilogram. For the seventy five people that might be on this Jazz aircraft, that’s a total of thirty-eight kilograms or about eighty three pounds per flight.

It seems to me that there’s enough swing in the passenger and luggage loads such that the weight shouldn’t make much of a difference. Suppose a men’s rugby club books a dozen tickets instead of a middle school girl’s gymnastics team. Each one of those guys could weigh three times as much as the girl. What do you do about that?
Sure, many domestic airlines no longer have life vests, but for the eighty pounds of weight saved, is it really worth the drama and customer disgust?

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