Your next flight will look nothing like this.
Ahh, holiday week. A time when journalists will brush off any old clinker and write it up in order to fill their word quota for the week. Take this AP story about airborne Internet. It begins with:
Seat 17D is yapping endlessly on an Internet phone call. Seat 16F is flaming Seat 16D with expletive-laden chats. Seat 16E is too busy surfing porn sites to care. Seat 17C just wants to sleep.
… and goes on to raise fascinating commentary from Vint Cerf and some professor about “developing social norms for using the Internet in flight.” Most carriers will embed filtering in their systems and allow limited Internet access, ensuring you’ll pay big for the privilege of using a little VoIP, some UMA, and a wee bit of email on board. Giving the full Internet, however, might give children of an eyeful of scathing hot wildebeest porn and no one wants that.
Wring your hands all you want, friends. Getting your Blackberry to work at 30,000 still won’t make your next flight any more comfortable and when it happens, it will change very little except encourage more business class travel as airlines begin offering “full sized power outlets” and “5 cents a minute Internet.”