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In-Flight Web Access Coming Soon?
tewl wrote to us with news that in-flight Internet and e-mail may soon be available on commercial airline flights, but that U.S. airlines are still wary of it. It sounds pretty interesting, but it also sounds like the earliest it's going to roll out is next year. Honestly, I'd like them to work on power adaptors first, but, hey.
I agree completely with you in terms of the comfort. Especially because my company never decides to send me on trips at the last second and then still looks for rock bottom prices. The record all time worst itinerary: 20 hours in the air travel system to get from Manchester to Sacramento, when I could have flown direct Boston to San Francisco.
And, I travel a lot.
But -- I don't think that trying to squeeze a laptop into the mix really helps. I'd rather have a book, or just to sit and daydream.
Frankly, in terms of innovations, I'd take an airline that gave me two inches more width or depth over Internet access any day.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If you can relax in a coach class seat, then you're a lot smaller than I am (and I consider myself to be a pretty "average"-sized guy). Sleep on a plane has never been really possible for me under normal circumstances.
When I'm on a long plane flight, I'm DESPERATE to find something else to do besides think about how cramped I am. Books, my laptop, cheesy portable arcade games - if I don't have them, then I really AM wiped out when I reach my destination!
Actually, I got the info from a friend who was involved with the study (they work at the NTSB), when I asked about the safety record of the 747 because of what happened with Flight800.
-- toolie
Good point about the split bus, those gensets would fight terribly. Constant Speed Drive? Revolting! Unless it's hydrodynamic, there are too many things to break.
A direct connection to the turbine would be horribly complex. A pnematic or hydrolic connection is simpler...
But IIRC the APU on the B737 is a tiny thing, not like the engine on the B727. How can it produce enough compressed air to start the big boys? You'd have to run a 2" line clear to the expanders, and use it as a storage vessel.
Also whilst the B727 has everything in one place (at the back) a B737 has an engine on each wing and the APU in the tail.
Someone go do this. You'll make a ton of money.
sulli
sulli
RTFJ.
Just depends on what you like to do for fun - I'm pretty consistent about zoning out when I'm in front of a computer screen (much to the irritation of my family). Time goes pretty fast for me when I'm doing it though.
What I _really_ fantasize about is having a wearable virtual reality setup - plane? I'm on a plane? oh yeah, I forgot :)
I was right there with you ... until you mentioned the lack-of-crowds.
I too am about 6'4, and I take Amtrak to Virginia all the time to visit my girlfriend.
And the seats are _truly_ lovely (especially compared to airline travel!) and it's reasonably quick.
But the Philly-to-DC-and-parts-south run is usually ALWAYS packed! On a typical day, it's SRO until at LEAST Wilmington, if not BWI!
But that's a quibble. I concur otherwhise most wholeheartedly - Amtrak is a pretty nice way to travel.
Redhawk
No, I'm pretty sure that power isn't a big issue. If it were, they would replace the CRTs with LCDs for showing the in-flight entertainment (true, newer planes use LCDs, but not because of the power drain).
Anyway, it wouldn't be a safety issue--you can bet that it would be set up so that if power runs low, non-essential systems go first. You might not like having your laptop considered non-essential, but that's life.
It sounds like someone in management said "Make it happen!" This means the implementation will be haphazardly thrown together. We already have problems with Laptops and portable radios interfering with the radio navigation used by airplanes. I can imagine the new problems this may cause.
I can't wait to see the headlines:
Hackers Take Control of Airplane While in Flight
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
Notice how all those listed are for airlines and not individuals?
-- toolie
More seriously, I would be less enraged (as a frequent flier) if I could do productive things ... or just click on pretty widgets to kill time.
sulli
sulli
RTFJ.
What if there was never a crash with a privately owned 747? Then you wouldn't see any individuals right?
I did notice that it said: "Listing of all accidents in which the aircraft involved was damaged beyond repair:"
I work in this industry and have a bit of an idea of how many privately owned _large_ aircraft there are. Let's say that the sky isn't crowded with privately owned 747's.
I can see it now, you're sitting in your seat, surfing over to cnn.com, and suddenly you see a web page announcing that the airport you're landing at is having massive electrical problems resulting in planes crashing left and right... ;-)
sigs are a waste of space
Or terrorists will take advantage of this and make their demands via IRC.
You will answer my demands or else!
/dcc send demands.txt
Wouldn't this conflict with the policy of not using electronic devices during takeoff?
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Currently it costs like $2/minute and $5 for the first minute on the in flight phones, and that's at pretty crappy quality, it can barely sustain a 14.4 modem over it. What's the price going to be for a full 64k (atleast 64k) digital link? This is probably only going to target business travellers who are on expense accounts, not your average recreational geek who pays out of his pocket for this sort of thing.
The plane has three identical generators - two driven off the main engines, and one driven by a small turbine in the tail (the APU).
The generators are connected to the engines by a CSD (Constant speed drive) that...well, runs the gennies at a constant speed. The CSD is basically just a mechanical transmission. They generate 120 volts at 400Hz. (Incidentally, that's what that 'whine' is on the audio channels that you can hear - it's the 400Hz bleeding over). DC power for the stuff that runs on DC is 28vdc. It is either provided by the battery, or by the T/R (transformer/rectifier) units from the 120VAC supply.
Normally, in flight, the APU gets shut down, and power is provided by the engine-driven generators. This energy isn't free of course - if everyone turned their laptops on, the Captain would have to push the thrust levers a little bit more forward. I don't remember what the ratings of the generators are (but if you're really interested, email, and I'll look it up).
The generators cannot supply the same bus at the same time (there's a left and right bus) because if they are out of phase, all hell breaks loose. (The B727, so I am told, can run more than one generator on a single bus, but the B727 has a flight engineer to make sure everything is in phase)
Other aircraft services, such as pressurization and airconditioning are NOT electrical (although they are controlled electrically!). The air you breathe in a plane comes out of the engines off some of the high-pressure compressor stages (the compressor is *before* the combustion chambers). This extremely hot air goes through the PACKs (pressurization and airconditioning kit) so that it reaches you at the right temperature. Incidentally this is why you sometimes get smoke in the cabin when that engine all the way out there on the wing croaks.
Have you ever wondered why the lights flicker just after engine start? Well, on the B737 at least, Boeing employs "break before make" switches when the two power buses are switched from the APU's generator to the engine driven generators, hence there's a brief power outage when one of the pilots reaches up to the overhead panel and throws the switch.
Also...the engines on the B737 are not started by electricity! They are started by compressed air. To get the engines going, first you have to crank up the APU and use its compressor bleed air to start the engines. Smaller jets have electrically started engines though (bizjets like Lears, Citations etc.)
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I took and American Airlines flight recently that had power adaptors... they were car lighter style... but that was cool enough for my laptop accessory bag. :)
:P
As for in flight web-access... I'm sure it will be as reasonably priced as those in-flight phones... right? I'm sure they'll knock the price down to $1 or $2 a minute - or something equally reasonable...
BlackNova Traders
asshole passengers arguing over who's hogging the bandwidth.
on a flight back from Hawaii in March (the wife was attending a conference, so I tagged along for cheap) one chap got booted from first class back into sardine-class with us. The flight was about 30 people overbooked.
After loudly announcing that his wife was up there in first class, repeatedly (and why, we don't know), he settled down into his seat, got out his Mac powerbook, and started watching a porn DVD.
I can hear it now, "Stewardess, can you make that man surf with both hands?"
wireless networking on jumbo jets?
you know all those near misses you hear about in the news ("TWO PLANES CAME WITHIN 150 FEET OF EACH OTHER TODAY...").
hmmm....
what is the range on 802.11 again?
-=tonyt=-
Unfortunately, once you get off the modernized tracks, you're sharing older tracks with freight trains and may find yourself delayed significantly. They're getting much better, but for business travel it really depends.
In a move that the airlines (and the computer biz!) should emulate, they recently introduced an unconditional money-back guarantee. Pretty damn good.
As for cellphones on trains, this doesn't work so well on electric routes (notably the NE Corridor, DC-Boston). I think there's too much interference. Anyone working on always-on net access from trains (which would be so, so nice!) would need to solve this problem before it would work well.
sulli
sulli
RTFJ.
It was $15 to be connected, then $10/minute.
That is $615 per hour. For that price, I could:
- pay for a Bell 206 helicopter AND pilot for an hour.
- pay the direct costs of a one hour flight in a Lear 35 bizjet.
- fly a Beechcraft Bonanza for six hours.
- fly our Cessna 140 for 30 hours (which is plenty of time to get across the Atlantic and back if you don't mind doing it single-engine at 85 knots)
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I've never quite understood why the people who are generally decent and well off enough to fly, go nuts and embark on a drunken binge when they board a plane.
Its cause you get drunk faster at lower air pressures, and the air pressure in an airplane at 30,000 ft, is about like being at ~8,000 feet on the ground. So basically you drink what you are used to and get more kick...
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
I have been testing Real tournament on the tenzing system and it works great.
We will be showing this to airlines next week.
"How to kill 300 people on your next flight"
Unreal Tournament!
-- email me @ 30,000 ft
My mom is not a Karma whore!
Fly across the country and try to hack your way into the airplane's Internet server. It would be a lot more interesting than watching the lame movie.
I can just see it, "you have been owned, bi-atch", popping up on everyone's web browser.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I've always wondered why the doppler effect doesn't seem to effect phones on the aircraft (even though quality does suck, which is probably the doppler effect kicking in). So if the doppler is making the quality of an airline phone terrible, how will this effect data? If it's not doppler making the phones poor quality, what is being done to combat this effect? Any ideas/answers, E-Mail me.
In the print version of IEEE Spectrum this month (not sure if it is on-line), they had an article on improvements in aviation weather forecasting.
One of the things that they want to do is transmit real-time weather data to aircraft in flight. The problem is that it takes a lot more bandwidth then they have currently available to do this, so they are going to start putting in high-speed communications links on aircraft (via satellite, etc.)
The problem with this is that the increased bandwidth costs big $, so they are thinking of offsetting the cost to the airlines by offering some of the spare bandwidth to passengers for entertainment services including internet access.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
It would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that such policies are unmitigated crap. Which would be helpful.
sulli
RTFJ.
It's also very important that the internet access be real internet access, not some "air traveler portal" piece of shit. Local caching may be fine for Yahoo et al. (perhaps one could install a mini Akamai server on the plane?) but if this is anything like those touch-screen terminals in the airports now, it's close to useless. We need:
- ethernet ports to plug into, with DHCP;
- full access to the net (slow speed is ok);
- non http/pop3 applications (telnet, ping, ipsec); and
- no mandatory home page or ads!
A fast intranet would be nice too, so people can AIM and/or Quake with each other.
If it's designed this way, it will be fabulous and make me switch airlines. I'd even pay $5/flight for it. But I'm not holding my breath.
sulli
sulli
RTFJ.
I think the company "www.avrotec.com" is partnered with Microsoft and NASA to create the next generation "Highway In The Sky" ("HITS") aircraft instruments.
Supposedly, they will make it "as easy to fly as it is to drive a car". You just joystick your way through a tunnel/mesh to land and take off, and everything else is autopilot.
They run windows apps, too. Shame that NASA is using our tax dollars, partnered with MS, to create all this stuff, in what is essentially a closed consortium.
I think I'd be more comfortable if it was open sourced!
Does anyone know any more details on this project?
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Good God! Do you have any idea of the power that runs through an aircraft? Do you KNOW how many watts a single 100,000hp engine produces (of which the 777 has two of)? Thats roughly 74.5Mw per engine. Aircraft are designed to run on a single engine at take-off (the most aircraft-stressful portion of flight). That is a LOT of extra wattage.
Power was never a consideration or drawback - the weight of the extra wiring is (and always will be). That is one of the major reason US Airlines are hesitating to sign up for the inflight-net service - the extra weight of the equipment needed. In aircraft, weight == money. The more weight the aircraft has, the less it can carry. The less it can carry, the less they make off of it.
-- toolie
Despite their general availability for some years, UAL chose not to put them in coach. Typical behavior of the world's largest, and crappiest, airline. So I have limited expectations that web access will be any good, at least on UAL.
sulli
sulli
RTFJ.
http://www.panix.com/~stern/bad_crazy/bc6.html#Ano ther Reason to Fly Coach
Actually, he took a crap on the first class drink cart.
While I was looking for that link, I found this one
http://www.flyana.com/rage.html
It talks about some interesting causes of "air rage".
-B
The reason for disallowing use of certain electronic devices on airplanes is that there were a series of unexplained mishaps around 10 years ago. In-flight instrument failure that investigators to this day haven't figured out the reasons why it happened.
So the FAA said "Gee, it COULD have been portable electronic devices that are to blame" and imposed the ban. No laboratory test has ever shown conclusively that portable consumer electonic devices are even CAPABLE of interfering with aircraft systems. Never. It's a bogus ban based on anecdotal evidence.
It has bothered me for a long time that they continue to perpetuate this falsehood. At the same time I am grateful that I don't have to sit near people who are constantly on their cell phones. That would drive me crazy. I hope they keep the ban on cell phones for purely aesthetic reasons even after they come to their senses about the non-existant danger they always tell you about.
Yet another reason for airlines to raise prices.
I think you are full of shit. Here's a list of all 747's taken out of service, and (for most) the reason why:
http://aviation-safety.net/datab ase/type/104.shtml
You tell me which the other two are.
If your main purpose is to attract new customers, but you also want to cover some of your costs, $5/flight x 50 people x 4 flights per day would probably make economic sense. Besides, would you pay any more than $5/flight for internet access?
sulli
RTFJ.
I don't think aircraft in-flight have significant extra available electric generator power
;)) but it's pretty DAMN crazy.
/. right before the annual show (WAEA). Don't you guys understand we (the engineers) are all working our balls off to get the equipment ready for the show!
:)
Yes, actually they do. To give you an idea of In-Flight Entertainment (IFE) Systems out there, their power requirements range roughly from 7.500 to 35.000 Watts for a 300 seat installation (with individual displays).
I don't want to go into the details of IFE systems, because I am biased (I work for the one and only, tha best!
I do have to say that it's painful to finally have an article about our industry on
Gotta run (some wires tween aircraft seats
Breace
I used to fly back and forth between Newark and Boston on a regular basis. I flew so much I would end up with FF miles, and upgrade coupons. It was always a hoot to be in First Class. 7 guys in business suits, reading the WSJ, and me, tshirt, jeans, and a laptop, happily coding...
The prices I have seen quoted for this service are ridiculous, especially given the testimony of one employee of the provider that this is not real, live access - it's batched email and cached/canned web content.
Even if I am on an expense account $12/hr for 'internet access' is ridiculous. I can batch up my emails myself and send them when I get on the ground thank you very much.
The same thing applies to in room hotel broadband. Most of these services are priced at something like $10-$15/day. What?! Most business travellers might connect for thirty minutes each night to check email. For this a modem is quite enough, and virtually free. Its fine for web surfing too. I just don't get that much more out of a broadband pipe to justify that kind of cost.
These bozos need to learn something about pricing. When you offer a service and charge a hell of a lot more than the competing service, it had better offer a lot more, either in the way of convenience or services.
On a plane the competing service is waiting to get to a land line on the ground. Most people will gladly do this, accept perhaps on extremely long flights. Add to that the complexity of setting up the service and the software and the in flight internet access just does not seem to be a competitive service - it is way over priced and only marginally more convenient than the free options.
Also on the plane, Internet access is competing with the inflight movie and reading materials - which are virtually free to the traveller. This is about the only reason I might browse the internet on a long flight, for entertainment purposes. I don't know that reading some canned day old wall street journal web site on my laptop is better than reading the real thing I bought for 75 cents in the terminal.
They're all going to be at the WAEA show in Anaheim, near Los Angeles, next Monday to Friday. It does cost $135 per ticket for the public though, but maybe you can share tickets :-)
They're the people who are actually going to be implementing on-flight web access, on-demand video, etc.
I would mention the in-flight entertainment company I'm working for during the summer here, but we don't want to be slashdotted! But we've got satellite linkup working for Net access in a development model, with USB connectors for laptops etc. (software for that not written yet), along with cool proper on-demand video - pause, fast forward, rewind all work - much better than what I've experienced on Virgin Atlantic recently!
* hAx0r has joined channel #hAx
wr0d
i hAv3 jUZt hAx0r3d tHA iNfL1gHt c0mPUtAh
0n tH1s 7373131337
aND n0w 3y3 d0 Fr33stYl3 pAtcH0rZ l1nk1nG dA w1nGz t0 mAh f0rc3-f33dBAcK j0yst1x p0rT 0n qUak3
ph00lz!!! 34t l33t m4cH-1 r0x0r!!!
* hAx0r glides fr33stYl3
(airplane rocks back and forth erratically)
aAAaH! ra1lgUnZ de4tH!
0k l3tZ trY r0ck3t jUmP
(airplane spins into a nosedive)
wh3r3 1z tHA bUtT0n f0r g0d-m0d3?
(*crash*)
n000! d1s 0c3aN 1z m4d3 0v lAvA!
Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!
* Quits: hAx0r (Connection reset by peer))
* hAx0r has joined channel #hAx
<hAx0r> wr0d
<hAx0r> i hAv3 jUZt hAx0r3d tHA iNfL1gHt c0mPUtAh
<hAx0r> 0n tH1s 7373131337
<hAx0r> aND n0w 3y3 d0 Fr33stYl3 pAtcH0rZ l1nk1nG dA w1nGz t0 mAh f0rc3-f33dBAcK j0yst1x p0rT 0n qUak3
<hAx0r> ph00lz!!! 34t l33t m4cH-1 r0x0r!!!
* hAx0r glides fr33stYl3
(airplane rocks back and forth erratically)
<hAx0r> aAAaH! ra1lgUnZ de4tH!
<hAx0r> 0k l3tZ trY r0ck3t jUmP
(airplane spins into a nosedive)
<hAx0r> wh3r3 1z tHA bUtT0n f0r g0d-m0d3?
(*crash*)
<hAx0r> n000! d1s 0c3aN 1z m4d3 0v lAvA!
<hAx0r> Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!
* Quits: hAx0r (Connection reset by peer))
that was only 6' square?
Airline internet access is a logical corrolary overall erosion of time to relax. I'ts inevitable that it will happen, and it will do good for some people some of the time, but most of the time it means you can arrive at your destination completely wiped out.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
TWA Flight 800 was a 747 that was purchased from an oil sheik in the mid-east. It was one of three aircraft (the other two which also exploded in mid-flight) that the sheik had specially modified. IIRC, those are the ONLY 747s in the history of the aircraft that were brought down by electrical failure.
Not ALL of the power is used to provide thrust (although you are correct when you say most is). As was pointed out before, there are a few airlines that already have jacks at every seat. My point was that it was NOT limited by power (as the original poster suspected), but by weight and money.
-- toolie
The 'phones currently on most planes are low-level satellite up-links (normally the Racal MCS-6000 nowadays, which has an uplink bandwidth of about 64K, IIRC) which are then split into up to 8 lines (radio for cockpit and 7 speech lines of about 8Kbps - if not all lines are in use, they have 3 lines of 17.8K, or somesuch, and an extra one. This, as you can guess, is not great, but when it came out, some years (5?) ago, it was pretty nifty.
:-).
Now, however, broadband satellite uplinks are on the way - with a 128K + shared data pipe connection for passengers, and dynamically portioned speech bandwidth of about the same, featuring useful items like a data uplink channel that relays data about the plane's systems to an external system (redundancy for the black box system, and useful as an aide in diagnosing problems from the ground as well as in the air). These should be avaliable RSN, and will be fitted to a plane near you soon. Hopefully
James F.
There could be a lot of privacy issues here.
The domain would probably identify you as a passenger of a given airline.
It could easily be misconfigured so that cookies survive between different legs of the same flight, so that someone on a latter leg would already be signed in to whatever servers the previous passenger had been visiting.
And of course, just like with laptops, anyone sitting nearby can see what you're doing. So if you like to visit porn sites, you'll run a risk of offending other passengers. Air rage? Yet another cause. Oh wait, they'll probably use some censorware to solve that problem and create a bunch of new ones.
Anyway, there are a bunch of issues for the airlines to deal with. Personally, I would prefer if they just provided a power outlet and an ethernet port (or run wireless networking--wouldn't the FAA love that!).
Now the airline that makes it free instead of $$$/minute will see a huge boost in ticket sales.
I don't think aircraft in-flight have significant extra available electric generator power for more than a few first-class seats. They do suck back ~30W each. Or to get it, they would have to turn off reading/cabin lights.
Hopefully, it wouldn't come down to: "Please unplug your laptops. The captain has just lost all the flight instruments!"
I can find out (unfiltered by the networks) all about the latest demonstration that I missed because work sent me to the other end of the country at the last possible moment!
Just have to figure out how to charge the connection fee to the contract without raising a flag...
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Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
For the defendant, it sure helps obfuscate that pesky jurisdiction problem!
"The first 4 characters of the command began while the plane was over TN, but the line was completed over Arkansas..."
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Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
As is typical of MSNBC, they're taking old news and presenting it as a dramatic new development. I was surprised not to see exclamation points in this article.
Got Rhinos?
Yup, Amtrak is great.
And they have a common sense ticketing policy with refundable tickets--the person sitting next to you pays the same as you.
The only problem is that you are on your own for communications. So if you want to be online, you need to use a cell phone connection. (Also, the power flakes out every once in a while, so you can only use it to avoid killing batteries, not to use stuff that doesn't have batteries.)