Blogging from 33,000 ft
Miscellaneous August 23rd. 2006, 1:50amMany of you may have seen the recent posting about Boeing shutting down the Connexion service. Well for the moment it is still working. I’m sending this from about 33,000 feet above the pacific. It’s funny - a really useful service and it isn’t profitable. I think that instead of providing free WiFi in the Silicon Valley, Google should focus on providing free WiFi in airplanes where people really need it.
I believe that the fundamental reason this service isn’t profitable is simply that it is hard to use your laptop in economy class. On international flights there is more space but the recline is lower so if you are sitting behind a recliner, you are out of luck! It seems with all the engineering talent produced in the world that it shouldn’t be too hard to create a seat with a hollow back simplifying the laptop process. Or why have seats at all? Why not configure the airplane with little cells, kind of like a beehive. Yes I know, safety issues and all that but I think most of us would rather sleep than sit up.
That’s all for now. Off to Seoul!
August 23rd, 2006 at 2:05 am
Wow… it’s very a surprised thing.
Is it possible to use Internet in Air?
Take care in Seoul and Say hello to Seoul instead of me.
I really miss Seoul such as a terrible traffic, the serious air pollution worse than L.A., and so on. :)
August 23rd, 2006 at 10:11 am
Boeing has stated that cancellation of Connexion service will improve earnings by about 15 cents a share starting in 2007. One of the major drawbacks of Connexion was that their antennas were very large and only fit on widebody airliners. I’ve never personally used Connexion, but from what I hear it offers great service (4 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up), probably better than what you get at home. However, the service was $29.99 per flight for flights longer than 6 hours and $19.99 per flight otherwise. To me, even if I really wanted to use Wifi, that’s too much. Personally, I object to paying anything over $5.00 for any kind of in flight airline service, whether it be satellite TV, alcoholic beverages, or wireless internet. In total, I think that technically Connexion was sound, but I’m not sure the system was designed to be efficient in terms of resources (cost and size)…this is why competition is good. Connexion was a miserable failure because it took too many resources so it was difficult to be profitable. Other in-flight Wifi services exist, and if they are designed efficiently, maybe Boeing planes will follow their lead. Perhaps they’ll pass the cost savings onto you (don’t hold your breath!).
As far as the beehive issue…that’s just a nightmare. What about Grandma or obese and handicapped patrons? Are you going to roll Grandma’s old bones into her cubby? Maybe we could try the vampire thing. Everybody could be hung from the celing by their ankles.
August 23rd, 2006 at 8:31 pm
Or maybe passengers should be frozen and stored in the cargo fridge, and defrozen at destinations. At least the “freshness” of us are retained.
September 6th, 2006 at 6:12 pm
Last I checked obese people didn’t fit in the seats in any case. And grandpa, well he can have a conventional seat. I think if I can use some 3D packing theorems to pack 20% more on the plane that will pay for my suggested modifications. Just need an easy and quick way to get people in their cells.