Thursday, June 4, 2009

Airplanes should be retrofitted with USB power on the armrests.

qantas1 I can't believe they use Hi8 tape for their entertainment playback. What dinosaurs- a 20 year-old tape format! Haven't they heard of DVDs? It's a  format which is built around easy menu driven, chapter-based playback and pausing, eliminating the need for swapping out tapes. But if you take a look in the closet of most passenger jets, you'll see ancient tape playback.

planeThe fact that they still don't offer WiFi is stupid enough. When it comes to cellular, I am not in favor of introducing cell-yell to the cabin, but texting and email would be ok.

USB would provide a safe, low-voltage power supply that passengers could use to charge their mobile devices during long flights, when available battery power is taxed. The cables are already widely available and it is a standard in peripheral device power.

The FAA approach to green-lighting cabin technology works about as quickly as NASA's. NASA has a flight-worthiness certification that takes so long, that it sent up twenty year-old tube cameras on probes, long after much-improved CCD technology was available. Of course, airlines don't want to spend money when they are losing money. They don't even like to paint their planes anymore, it seems. But if they can get people to swallow paying for baggage and food, anything is possible.

1 comment:

serial# said...

Oddly enough, just a couple of hours after this rant about 20 year old tape decks, I had the great pleasure of watching a flight attendant attempt to resuscitate one. He was resetting and rebooting and starting to sweat. I told him I was a Sony engineer and recommended he jiggle the wires. This seemed to work, as the audio reappeared after a momentary crackle.