Wednesday, August 26, 2009

wireless on planes

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yesterday we flew back from Crete to London on a nice A320 run by
Monarch Airlines - very pleasant - after the usual safety announcements
about turnign off all wireless (which actually listed wireless
laptops, games, GSM, 3G, SMS and so on), we took off, quickly reached
cruising altitude and then a whole bunch of different kids started
playing on their Nintendo DSs - there's this cute ad hoc wireless
conferencing app that they all started using, and slowly, abut 30 kids
discovered each other and a game evolved which was very like
Nottingham University's "can you see me now", with kids waving arm in
the air and other kids had to tag a person on screen before a hand
went down....very cute

and of cours, entirely based on wireless ethernet......
the game ewnt on most the 3.30 flight and noone from the
flight attendants said a word....

ignorance and creativity...

so cute:)

and prima facie evidence that a WHOLEr LOT Of wifi traffic has abslutely zero impact on the safe flying of a fly-by-wire moden plane.

3 comments:

mrry said...

Well I should hope not: I was flying SFO-SEA-SFO on Virgin America the other day, and they'll sell you wifi access for $7.95....

Unknown said...

I flew Delta/NWA and on the inland legs of the LHR-Detroit-SFO;; there was a rather effective go-go inflight wireless service. Free. To all.

Unknown said...

I'm vastly more impressed by the ability for kids to "just get on with it" - a stark contrast to a comment (Alec Boers I think)
"I can count the number of long-term friends I've made on a plane on the fingers of no hands" - quite.

(Comparing plane flights and sea voyages.)