Cell Phones In The Air

Bigsky

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Oct 29, 2002
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I hope if NWA pursues this type of technology, it is limited to email/internet communication only. Good article below. cheers bigsky




Wireless
There's something truly obnoxious in the air
SUSAN PAYNTER SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST, 10.04.04, 12:35 PM ET

I have a recurring dream in which I'm flying.

For five or six blissful hours at a stretch I soar while savoring a specially bought book.

Someone else is feeding my kid. I wash no sweatshirts, cook no chicken, make no bed.

And no insistent phone call that must be placed or answered interrupts my reverie.

Well, snap out of it. The airlines are about to change all that by literally slapping us upside the head with new technology that will allow us to make and receive in-flight cell-phone calls. Five, eight, 10 hours of non-stop yakking on our very own phones!

Yes, the folks who already squeeze us into knee-bruising seats along aisles too skinny for carts of clammy-cold sandwiches soon will bring us the sex lives, sales deals and abdominal surgeries of our seatmates. All loud enough to hear over the air conditioning!

Late last month, Airbus demonstrated the "major new advancement in communications," announcing it will install in-flight phone networks by 2006.

Other carriers, including British Airways, are busily surveying frequent fliers while already relaxing previous restrictions on the use of cell phones while taxiing to the gate.

What a breakthrough!

In the October issue of Avionics Magazine, editor David Jensen notes, "Many airline passengers probably seek what might be described as the ultimate freedom in air travel: accessing e-mail, making phone calls and generally conducting business while airborne as if at the office or at home."

Of course, Jensen also offers his own nightmare scenario. Trapped in his assigned seat on a six-hour D.C. to L.A. flight and just 12 inches from his naked right ear he hears: "So my girlfriend tells me that he's, like, so cute, and I freak out because he's standing, like, right next to me, and I don't know what to do, so I go, 'omigod,' and ... "

I don't fly often. But, when I do, my favorite part is NOT talking. Not answering questions from kids or calls from work. Not hearing anything save recirculating germ-infested cabin air and the muted musical bleed from a seatmate's earphones.

Maybe if I traveled often for work I'd celebrate incoming, outgoing in-flight calls?

"No! As a working mother, it's my chance to get away. To escape," Peggy Keene tells me. A Seattle mom with two sons, she flies to trade shows around the globe -- many of them as far away as Asia -- for Korry Electronics. And, for 10 hours at a stretch, those flights are her stolen moments, her chance to get away, her guilty little pleasure.

She takes the stack of magazines she hasn't had time for, a book or two, and (if she can sneak the needles aboard) her knitting. "Maybe I even daydream," Keene confessed.

The last thing she wants is to stay connected, hooked up or plugged in. Politely, she declines more than the barest exchanges with her seatmates before settling back. In fact, on her last trip, she borrowed an expensive pair of Bose noise cancellation headphones from a friend to block out even the airplane's ambient noise.

A woman after my own heart. And there must be more.

Already, airlines are hearing preemptory suggestions from passengers. Like separate sections for cell-phone users or in-flight "phone booths."

Remember "Get Smart?" Maybe, like oxygen masks, "cones of silence" could drop from the overhead to encase the head of the cell-phone yakker in the next seat.

Carriers actually are having serious discussions of possible cell-phone rules that could restrict conversations to 10 minutes or less.

But who would police that? The poor, already beleaguered flight attendant, of course.

Verneta Seaton flies for Delta out of Atlanta after having to make her own long-distance commute from her home in Seattle now that Delta has closed its base here.

"I'm with you. It's a chance for a little peace and quiet," said the mom of a teenage son. "People are so loud on those phones. And I don't care about their date last night."

But, once she's on duty, the idea of policing cell use is even less appealing.

"I just think it's going to add to the irritation (of flying)," Seaton said. "The seats are so close now. You don't have a lot of leg room. Flights are full. There are so many sensations up there, so much already going on in that pressurized tube."

So, when a passenger gets irked by a loud, trans-Atlantic phone call, it will fall to the flight attendant to act as peacekeeper and interventionist. "It will be, 'Ma'am, can you come and tell this person to be more quiet, please?' " Seaton said.

Fliers already can be rude about communicating with flight attendants while talking on cell phones before takeoff as attendants are trying to instruct and serve.

"They're so wrapped up in their conversation and you have only a certain amount of time to get your job done," Seaton said.

Imagine how they're apt to respond if they're springing three bucks a minute for a midflight gab while imbibing an adult beverage and they're asked to please keep it down?

How about this recurring reverie? Airlines study the social impact of offering cell-phone use in-flight and decide to save the last unraveling shred of disconnectedness. Across the industry they agree that, from takeoff to landing -- except in the case of a hijacking -- we are allowed to escape from cell phones into clouds and books and the whoosh of pressurized air.

Now I'm really dreaming.

To see more of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, for online features, or to subscribe, go to http://seattlep-I.com.

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER