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Hey dufus, put your hands down. Why are you celebrating all of this aeroplane Wi-Fi internet access? Oh, right. Now I remember. You're my boss. And now I must do your bidding from anywhere in the world at any time. Thanks a lot, airlines! I'll never be able to dodge work again.
Posted by Nick Broughall at 3:00 PM on November 24, 2008
The Airbus A380 has been flying in and out of Australia for over 12 months now courtesy of Singapore Airlines, but for those of you with a preference for flying Qantas, their first A380 has been flying for a couple of months. Lifehacker Editor and perennial traveller Angus just happened to get a seat on one of the new monstrously large planes on a recent trip to the US, and has reviewed the in-flight entertainment experience in his Road Worrier column.
Jalopnik's Road Test Editor Wes Siler is currently at 35,000 feet, flying American Airlines from LA to NY. Since his Boeing 767 had the recently launched Gogo in-flight Wi-Fi, and since he was already using it to get his work done, we decided to see how far the service could go in terms of in-flight comforts.
Early last week a Qantas Airlines Airbus A330 surprised (and injured) its passengers with an inexplicable 300ft climb, followed by an even larger drop. Initial reports seemed to place blame on interference from personal electronics — something that Qantas had claimed before. After the news made the rounds the situation became muddied, with Qantas claiming that the initial news reporting misrepresented their claims and reporters backing away from the story. In any case, rest easy, Australian in-flight gadgeteers — it wasn't your fault.
I was hoping that American Airlines would stand up against religious groups' stupid demands, keeping their in-flight online service completely un-filtered. After all, they had great arguments: filtering porn sites will jeopardise the access to legitimate web sites, hindering the usability of their aeroplane wireless network. Not to mention the fact that people wanting to look at naughty bits in airplanes can always watch the porn stored in their computers, mobile phones, and personal multimedia players. The network filtering is not going to change that. Sadly, they now have changed their tune:
If you're flying one of Europe's many discount carriers and you're not violently hungover, you're probably doing something wrong--the cabins of those single-class A319s are bubbling tempests of unshowered, throbbing rage that always seem a fraction of a degree away from boiling over. Now on your sunrise flight from Krakow to Berlin, you can enjoy constant mobile phone blabbing from up to six surrounding seats thanks to the good folks at Ryanair, 3, and O2.
Flight attendants are the latest group looking to put the kibosh on in-flight porn, which they say is polluting the airways thanks to the new American Airlines in-flight wireless network. Taking a page from Focus on the Family, the 19,000-strong union is looking to filter the content web surfers can access in the air. But is the air really getting polluted with porn? As is the case most of the time, Association of Professional Flight Attendants reps couldn't produce specific examples of "alternative" in-flight entertainment, but did say "a lot of complaints" were raised by attendants and passengers alike.
