FAA Computer Glitch Causing Widespread Flight Delays

For the second time in 15 months, an FAA computer glitch has rippled through airports across the country, causing major delays. Clearly, when one computer goes down in Salt Lake City and it drags down our entire air traffic system, something needs to be done. At any rate, if you have a flight to catch today, make sure to check its status before heading to the airport. [AP]

FAA Mildly Concerned About Flight Attendants Carrying Handheld Bombs

They're on pretty much every flight now: Handheld credit card readers to buy snackies and soda. None have exploded, yet, but the FAA just issued special advisories to airlines, since they're powered by explode-y lithium ion batteries. More »

How Budget Airlines Undercut the Majors (Spoiler: Infographics)

Personal theory: Man has a natural propensity to question what he reads but believe anything he sees in neat infographic form. And this is one heck of an infographic, comparing budget airlines (like Southwest) to traditional companies like Delta. More »

Heroic Passenger Fixes Aircraft, Deserves Ticker Tape Parade

He may not be on the same level as Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, but to the passengers of Thomas Cook flight TCX9641, the aircraft engineer traveling on board was a true hero. More »

Would You Pay for In-Flight Wi-Fi?

Runway Girl Mary Kirby has been covering inflight Wi-Fi for quite a while. She notices that while Wi-Fi is going free in cafes, parks, and hotels, the airlines want you to pay. More »

In-Flight Entertainment Could Go Wireless, But You'll Have to Bring Your Own Screen

Personal in-flight entertainment systems are getting pretty close to ubiquitous, at least on long-haul planes. According to the NYT, in-flight wi-fi will soon be just as common. Now airlines are wondering: why not just combine the two? More »

Virgin Gets Wi-Fi On All Flights

AirTran said they were going to be the first to get Wi-Fi on every flight, but Virgin just ninja'ed in and beat them to it. More »

The Weird State of In-Flight Wi-Fi in the US

Airlines don't officially compete on being the most efficient at stripping away your remaining tatters of dignity. No, the new battleground is in-flight Wi-Fi. I'm somehow unsurprised the worst airline in the country is winning. More »

Pet Airways Is the World's First Pet-Only Airline

Pet Airways was designed to cater to, yes, your best friend. With potty breaks and attendants checking on your pet's comfort, they'll travel in the lap of luxury. Sort of. More »

Japan's Bullet Trains to Get Wi-Fi

Starting this week, Japan's Shinkansen bullet trains will feature wireless LAN from Tokyo to Osaka. More »

Southwest Airlines' In-Flight Wi-Fi Free While In Beta

Southwest this week began testing their own in-flight wi-fi service, based on a satellite connection from Row 44. It's on one plane now with more coming soon, and right now, it's free. More »

Delta to Launch In-Flight Wi-Fi In The Next Few Weeks

Previously shooting for the first half of 2009, word is now that Delta's in-flight wi-fi rollout will begin before the end of 2008—i.e. very soon. More »

Qantas Now Pretty Sure That Your iPod Didn't Almost Crash Their Plane

Early last week a Qantas Airlines Airbus A330 surprised (and injured) its passengers with an inexplicable 300ft climb, followed by an even larger drop. Initial reports seemed to place blame on interference from personal electronics — something that Qantas had claimed before. After the news made the rounds the situation became muddied, with Qantas claiming that the initial news reporting misrepresented their claims and reporters backing away from the story. In any case, rest easy, Australian in-flight gadgeteers — it wasn't your fault. More »

Long Overdue GPS Upgrade Could Save Airlines $10 Billion a Year

Technically speaking, you have better navigational capability in your car than the entire airline industry. Why? Because they are still relying on an antiquated WWII era traffic network that often takes aircraft on zigzagging routes towards radar beacons—costing carriers billions of dollars in wasted fuel each year. To make matters worse, the plan to upgrade the system has been stuck in the planning stages for more than a decade thanks to funding issues an the complexity of such a switchover. More »

Qantas Looking To Blame A330's Sudden Drop in Altitude On Passengers' Gadgets?

Earlier this week, a Qantas A330 inexplicably climbed 300 feet and then suddenly nose-dived back down. In the cabin, 71 people were injured. Interestingly, the ATSB is now looking at in-cabin interference from personal electronics as a possible cause of the "irregularity with the aircraft's elevator control system." Wait, what? Really? More »

Delta to Block Porn On In-Flight Wi-Fi So Flight Attendants Don't Have To

Where the open internet goes, porn follows; howerver, this golden rule is being re-evaluated for the friendly skies by Delta, who plans to filter web sites used on their implementation of Aircell's Gogo in-flight Wi-Fi service. While most of the early adopters of in-flight Wi-Fi have said they will only filter certain types of traffic and not web content itself, relying on flight attendants to handle case-by-case complaints of passengers attempting to join the solo mile high club right from their seat. Which they obviously weren't too happy about. More »

Air Canada to Be First International Airline With Aircell In-Flight Wi-Fi

Aircell, the company behind American Airlines and later Delta's in-flight Wi-Fi services, has just signed up Air Canada to be the next airline to offer its passengers the web in the air via Gogo. They'll soon begin fitting their Airbus A319s with the necessary gear, and the service will begin on select flights that cross the border to the south starting in the spring of 2009, guaranteeing no Canuck is without live NHL score updates and news about their bad-ass socialized health care for more than a few minutes at a time. Phew. More »

How to Make VoIP Calls on Aircell's In-Flight Wi-Fi

The folks at Aircell, providers of the Gogo in-flight Wi-Fi service that launched on American last week, have admitted that the ban on video and VoIP chats via Skype and other clients is not bandwidth related, it's for the sanity of everybody else on the plane (much like the in-flight calling ban that's started to float around Congress). Well, after the first few days of the service, Andy over at VoIP Watch has found a backdoor via the Twitter-based VoIP app Phweet that allows for chatting from 35,000 feet. If you must, read on for the details. More »

American Airlines In-Flight Wi-Fi Launches Today on Three Routes

If you're flying on an AA 767-200 from NYC to San Francisco, Miami or Los Angeles, you can kick the tires of American's new Gogo/Aircell in-flight Wi-Fi service for $12.95 (the rate for flights over 3 hours). It's the same provider Delta will be using as they roll out the service fleetwide starting soon. Let us know how it is from the air, Giz jet-setters. More »

Prototype Remote-Activated Wrist Stun-Device Shocks You For Airplane Security

This story from the Washington Times seems more ridiculous than ridiculously awesome, but the base of it is that some official in the Department of Homeland Security has "expressed great interest" in a wrist bracelet that can be remotely activated to stun the wearer. It works by taking the place of a boarding pass, which you then wear on your wrist so the flight attendants can know who you are, where you are, and even shock you if you're misbehaving. What makes this thing completely absurd is the diagram after the jump. A man threatens a crew member with a knife. The crew member shocks the man into submission, then SHOCKS EVERYONE ELSE as punishment for sitting passively by while he was being threatened. More »

June 29 Will Be Like Y2K for Airlines

America has never been a fan of frilly international standards, like the meter or the Kyoto Protocol, but for some reason the airline industry is switching flight plans for all domestic flights over to the international standard on June 29. According to our people's champion brother blog, you might wanna be prepared to at least stand around longer than usual—like Y2K, the switchover could make things screw-y and bork a whole bunch of flights, or it could be totally painless. Make sure your gadgets have a full battery charges, just in case. [FAA via Consumerist]

Singapore Airlines Flights Get iPhone/iPod Docks and 15.4-inch LCDs

Singapore Airlines is installing iPod docks and 15.4-inch widescreen LCDs in their all-Business Class Airbus A340-500 flights between NY/LA and Singapore, ensuring that we're going to be flying with them if we ever have to travel to that part of the world. Each business customer can dock their iPhone or iPod and watch their own movies on the included noise-canceling headphones—which will be interrupting when the captain wants tell you to look off to your left so you can see a drunken Superman mooning your plane. Flights from Newark with this will start May 15 (today), and August for the LA ones. Maybe now business passengers won't engage in business time whilst in the air.

Urinals Coming to Airplanes, Beware the Golden Shower Turbulence

This is a pic of the urinals at Stockholm's Arlanda airport, courtesy of urinal.net, but if a German design company has its way, pissoirs will soon be a feature of passenger jets. Dassler Interiors has designed one-man urinals designed to stand alongside (sorry) the existing cubicle toilets on planes—let's just hope that they come with doors. More »

Emirates Air In-Flight Showers Cost $18,000 (Plus Enviro Guilt?)

Starting October 1, if you're flying first class from Dubai to New York on an Emirates Air A380, you'll have the option of grabbing a hot shower midflight. It'll cost you $18,000, but some showers are worth it, am I right? "No!" say those party poopers in the environmental lobby. More »

Emirates the First Airline to Allow Inflight Calls from Passenger Cellphones

Dubai-based airline Emirates has claimed the first ever permitted mobile phone call from a commercial flight. The conversations took place aboard a Casablanca-bound Airbus A340 that had been kitted out with a system that stops cellphones from messing with the plane's electronics. By the end of the year its passengers will be able to clack away on their BlackBerries and use other data services, such as sending texts. Calls on night flights will not be allowed, and the crews will be allowed to prohibit yakking whenever they feel like it. The only stipulation is that cell users, who can only make calls when at cruising height keep their phones switched to silent—thank God—during flights. [BBC Online]

Pilot Gets Fired After Extremely Low Flyby in Brand-New Boeing 777

Captain Ian Wilkinson got fired after doing a crazy 322mph flyby at 28 feet over the 9,000-foot runway at Paine Field, a regional airport located next to Boeing's Everett facilities, the manufacturing site of the new 777-300 he was flying to Hong Kong, and the 787 Dreamliner. Reportedly, first he was congratulated upon arrival (as shown in the picture,) but when the video of his stunt hit the web, he was fired: More »

Southwest Airlines Testing Satellite Broadband Internet Access For Your Pleasure

According to their own press release, Southwest is going to be testing in-flight broadband satellite Wi-Fi access so you can check your mail and do all sorts of stuff (though probably not surf porn or talk to someone on Skype). They'll start testing on four planes this summer, with a wider rollout to come whenever they damn well feel like it. [PRNewswire]

Air France Makes In-Flight Calling Possible, Gallic Shrugs All Round

Air France is to let passengers loose on their cellphones by turning on its in-flight mobile data and voice system. An initial three-month trial period will only allow SMS and mobile emails, with voice calls expected to come later. Although this is the first European carrier to allow mobile devices to be used, one wonders whether the famously laconic French will be le bothered by the news. More »

Update: Jet Blue Wi-Fi Crippled For a Reason

Jet Blue's air-to-ground cellular network (provided by LiveTV on the same spectrum as those in-flight phones no one uses) is still experiencing too many dropped connections between cell nodes to support the bandwidth necessary for full-on surfing, the NY Times is reporting. Hence the Yahoo Mail/IM and Blackberries only restriction, and the lack of cost. American, Virgin America, and Alaska Airlines are expected to join the fray with more robust, pay-per-use services "in the coming months," the latter using a more reliable and international satellite connection for more bandwidth and range. [New York Times]

JetBlue. Free Wi-Fi. December 11th 2007. Kind of.

I can hardly believe my eyes, but the WSJ and Reuters are reporting that JetBlue is offering Wi-Fi on it's flights December 11th, 2007. But wait a minute. The service will be able to "support the entire plane" but don't expect YouTube out yet. The biggest catch is that only Yahoo Mail and IM on lappies, and Wi-Fi enabled RIM phones like th 8820 and 8320 will be capable of using the link. More »

New Israeli Anti-Hijack Pilot Verification System Cannot Be Bluffed

Soon, pilots from all airlines flying into Israeli airspace will have to enter a numbered sequence to prove they are not terrorist hijackers. The secret code will be generated by the Security Code System, designed by Elbit Systems complete with a credit-card-sized keypad. Authorized pilots everywhere will eventually be issued keypads, 10,000 in all. For security reasons, the Israeli government won't go into detail about what pilots are supposed to do, exactly. But they did mention what would happen when pilots failed to do it: More »

Lufthansa May Add Beds to Coach; Mile High Club to Add Thousands of Members

Sleeping while flying coach is damned near impossible, especially if you're over six feet tall. Sure, you could drop three times as much (or more) for one of those fancy business class seats that fold into a bed, but only suckers and jerkbags do that. If you're flying to Germany anytime soon, however, you might just get a bed with your coach ticket. More »

American Airlines to Test In-Flight Wi-Fi in 2008

Some time in 2008, you may be lucky enough to get on a 767-200 transcontinental American Airlines flight that's testing the AirCell in-flight broadband service. The wireless net access will be available to all classes—yes, even us poor people—for a price. There will be three antennas outside the plane to transmit your 802.11a/b/g "Lolz im on a plane" messages to your buddies. No word on when this will move to widespread deployment. [AA - Thanks Mike]