To you and me, it’s probably more painful settling down for a long flight and realising there’s no AC socket for your laptop than hearing there’s a crying baby behind you. It’s not stinginess that’s withholding the juice, it’s physics.
Simply put, the plane would be too heavy to take off. So claims various readers of The Atlantic, who wrote in after adding up the maths and coming to the conclusion that to offer 120V AC sockets to every person, you’d need the equivalent of 10 Chevy Volt batteries and an inverter “the size of a large refrigerator”. This is if every person was using two amps of power over an eight-hour flight, so it’d obviously vary.
Even a spokesperson for Virgin Atlantic got in touch, who said that for every three-person row of seats, two outlets are on offer for a maximum of 225 watts – though some have complained about the power cutting out. The discussion is a very interesting read for anyone who’s ever fumed over not being given a power socket, so I’d definitely recommend taking a look at the (often conflicting) arguments. [The Atlantic]
Molokov
Wednesday, October 27, 2010 at 8:12 AMFunny… my Cathay Pacific flights to and from Hong Kong did have power on every seat, economy included. It was quite handy to be able to use my laptop for more than 2 hours without the battery going flat…
Rod
Wednesday, October 27, 2010 at 11:14 AMSame here, so not sure who is telling porkies……..
Greg
Wednesday, October 27, 2010 at 11:52 AMQantas has USB and mains power for every seat on its A380 fleet. Must be defying the laws of physics (or have correctly done the numbers on actual usage).
Tim Keir
Wednesday, October 27, 2010 at 1:15 PMAll the Emirates A380′s have USB and power sockets in every seat too. Larger planes, larger allowances perhaps.
Vernon 'Jatsim'
Wednesday, October 27, 2010 at 1:38 PMEven AirAsia provides a USB power point for everyseat in its A330 fleet…
klaw
Wednesday, October 27, 2010 at 2:51 PMOr maybe they’re using engine power to provide electricity, rather than running a massive battery bank. Surely that’s not too difficult.
Dave
Wednesday, October 27, 2010 at 2:59 PMAn aircraft should be able to generate large amounts of AC power directly from the engines – that’s what would be used to power the avionics and could be used to provide seat power. There are backup power generation systems in case of engine failure for critical avionics.
Using a bank of batteries and inverters to run the seat power system sounds like total crap to me – it would be AC power generated by the engines.
klaw
Wednesday, October 27, 2010 at 4:04 PMI did a little research and yes, most of a typical airliner’s electricity comes from the main engines. There’s no reason they couldn’t get run an AC power outlet at each seat – in fact, plenty of airliners already have this.
Most large planes also have an auxiliary power unit – a seperate combustion engine powering a generator and hydraulic pump – for backup in an emergency, or for running onboard systems when the main engines are shut down.
Steve
Wednesday, October 27, 2010 at 7:44 PMThis is just PR bullshit. There’s no reason for them to not have AC plugs with every seat. A plane’s electricity comes about the same way it does in a car, from a built-in generator.
There is absolutely no reason to have a huge bank of batteries. This is just them making excuses.