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.

Comments

Shades of Die Hard 2....

[X]

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... ;-)

Re:Shades of Die Hard 2....

[VultureMN]

Teehee. We've made some press announcements so I don't think I'm breaking NDA by posting this stuff.

Anyway, I work at Tenzing, and here's some info to clear up some of the confusion. You may think some of Tenzing's ideas suck, but hey.

Email: You'll be able to use your current email account, you won't need a special tenzing account. There's some software that basically "dials up" to the onboard server; your laptop thinks it's connected to your ISP. It's pretty transparent, except you gotta use our SpecialNiftySoftware to start the whole process. Then the server just acts as a proxy between you and your ISPs actual mail servers. Mail gets collected, and every x minutes (set by the airline) all the mail is bundled, sent to the ground, and new mail for you gets sent up to the plane. So there is a delay.

Web: As noted, there's cached web content. However, it's not all just static crap. Partnerships with various places and search engines will allow searches, online orders, etc, in flight. Selected stuff will be updated during the flight, like stock quotes and maybe weather and whatever else our marketing dorks decide is necessary, but most updates will happen between flight legs.

Actual connectivity: None, yet. Some companies are working on actual broadband access during flights, but it's still experimental. We hope to get partnerships with these folx later. :)

Electronic device usage: Well, standard airline rules apply. The connection is thru the plane's phone lines to the seats, so there's no special new concerns. We've asked about using wireless, but the gov doesn't like that idea at the moment.

Quake games: Probably possible, but remember that, at least at first, you're limited to phone dialup speeds (since you connect thru the modem). Whether the games are doable or not depends on how the engineers setup the onboard boxes.

A piece of trivia: The servers are all running some OS that happens to be pretty popular around here. Muahah.

But at what cost?

[RJ11]

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.

Re:But at what cost?

[Marillion]

Huge Costs
Many modern aircraft are equiped with a device called ACARS. In short it is a VHF communication device between the onboard computerized (mostly) avionics and ground based computers. The VHF band is totally unsuitable for bandwidth over 32k. Airlines use ACARS to track their aircraft and the performance of onboard systems.
The small monopoly of companies that provide this kind of service charge an arm and a leg for the service. This puts it out of reach for anyone other than big fleet operators.
I fly a lot. I work for an airline. I really can't remember actually seeing anyone actually using that seat back phone. The airphone provider ate the cost of installation (but not aircraft interest; see below) and gives a percentage back to the airline. I can't imagine there is much revenue from those things. The airlines simply don't get enough money from those phones.
There is a good reason airlines are against it. There is an old addage: airplanes don't make any money on the ground. Airlines put their newest, best aircraft of premium routes. Taking an aircraft down for a week to install a few ethernet jacks and routers is huge amounts of lost revenue and the non-deferrable cost of whatever financing arangements (read interest) the airline has for that aircraft. Airlines who are still licking their fuel cost wounds aren't interested in opening up the money chests.

In short, the air to ground technology is still not mature enough to keep the cost low enough to get get enough people to use it.

How Aircraft Get Electrical Power

[Alioth]

OK, let's take the good 'ol Boeing 737-200 or -300.

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.)

Power adapters and web access

[Ron Harwood]

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. :)

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... :P

Free vs. Expensive; Crappy vs. Good

[sulli]

I agree that free is the right choice. The vendors are of course approaching the PHBs that run the airlines and pitching them on incremental revenue, so there needs to be a lobbying effort by the users in favor of free and useful internet access.

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

privacy issues

[crow]

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.

Power

[redelm]

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!"