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Great, now I can spend my Continental OnePass miles to buy content.

Not in Economy on any of the international flights I've been on.

A number of airlines actually do have limited in-flight power in economy these days, such as Delta and Continental. A good website for finding out which airlines have this feature on which equipment is SeatGuru.

What kind of airlines do you fly on? All the major U.S. domestic carriers do, as far as I can tell. Just now spot-checked Continental, Delta, United, and Southwest.

And who should you fly instead?

United: $15 first/$25 second
US Air: $15/$25
Delta: $15/$25
Continental: $15/$25
Northwest: $15/$25

I got bored here, but I think you get the picture....

The airline industry is a private corporation, not a federally run operation.

As others have noted, the claim was made that this was a government rule, not an airline specific rule.

There's actually huge amounts of gray area, and I'm not sure if that's because the rule is flexible or the airlines have a lot of discretion. For instance, in Continental Airline's ID Requirements page you'll see that you could fly as a normal passenger with a non-photo ID (for instance, with a Mastercard and a Social Security Card.) I'd presume that if you did show those documents, barring the computer choosing you as a Selectee, you'd undergo normal security procedures.

The idea of requiring ID to travel started after TWA 800. Airlines "claimed" that the rule was put in place by the government as a security procedure. In reality, I don't believe the government cared about ID and travel until 9/11.

The hypothesis by some is that the airlines (who were trying to create their own rules on requring ID to travel as early as 1994) needed the requirement in order to prevent the resale of discount tickets. By forcing people to travel with the name on the ticket, those travellers unlucky enough to need to fly to Miami tomorrow had to buy the $1200 fare, as opposed to buying it off any old John Smith who bought the ticket 3 months ago for $200.

The airlines couldn't actually make up the rule themselves, at risk of cheesing off their customers, so they took advantage of the mysteriousness of TWA 800 and pretended it was a security thing required by the government.

If that's true (and I'd love to prove that) then the government happened to forget that the ID requirement was not security related at all, so it's probably not a good idea to rely on it so much. In particular because it introduces the needless contradiction that people who fly without ID are put through stricter security procedures, which implies that people with ID are somehow less dangerous than those without.

Most empower adapters also double as a car charger as well.

Not that it isn't a pita to have to wait, but I wait at least that long, or I take a taxi. The company is covering it for business, and if it's not business, then anyone who would be picking me up probably came in on the same plane as me.

In short, there are plenty of ways around a 40 minute wait that don't require a cell phone call from the air. So it's hardly a reason for me to have to suffer the droves of cell phone yappers in a cramped environment. Anyway, the only people who could possibly need to be at that level of constant contact have an entourage of people to take care of such things, or better yet, their own damn airplane. Think POTUS. People still flying a commercial airline don't need to be able to call from the air.

I don't disagree with that, but you originally posted: "The restriction against using cell phones aboard aircraft is not an FAA rule, it's an FCC rule."

The implication is there is no FAA rule against using cell phones on aircraft. That's not true, and I posted a correction, with the appropriate citation.

If the FCC rule was the only constraining factor, there would be no grounds to restrict cell-phone usage while the plane is taxiing on the ground. But, most airlines currently require phones to be turned off while the plane is enroute between the gate and the runway.

There are exceptions: I've been on many planes in "ground hold" (waiting on a side taxiway for clearance to depart) in which cell phone usage was allowed. But, people are generally allowed to get out of their seat during that time, too.

Continental has relaxed their policy a bit:

Under the new policy effective today, cellular phone use is permitted after landing when advised by the flight attendants. Previously, phone use was restricted until the aircraft door opened at the arrival gate. [...] The policy on telephone use at departure remains unchanged -- phone use must be discontinued when the cabin door is closed.

Continental Airline's website renders slowly under Mozilla 1.1 (~7 CPU seconds on my 750 MHz PIII laptop), due to its, um, exces^H^H^Htensive use of tables (7 deep, last I checked). They render correctly, just slowly.

I presume that the Mozilla folks know their table layout algorithm is slow, even when table sizes are explicitly given.

Several other types of large planes for sale there too.

I'm pretty sure you can get the airline to just send the package. Continental happens to have a few options for domestic and international shipping. I have no idea if they fly to Russia, but other carriers must have the same services, no? I guess your friend would have to travel to the airport to get it, but that's not too bad.