British Airways Flight Attendants Using iPads to Improve Customer Service

[Amazing Iceman]

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I had a great vegan meal of curry from BA from London to Dallas. OTOH, AA's vegan meal was a sad veggie meatloaf.

I hope the iPad works out for BA's attendants.

heheh!Just wondering how is it possible for a meatloaf to be vegan??? It should be called veggieloaf instead!

 

[honem]

I just had a thought. I'll run it by you guys and either shoot me down or give it some thought.

What if there is a possibility that the navigation equipment isn't consistent between different models of airplane ? What if there are planes where their navigation equipment is fully shielded against any interference from mobile devices and planes which aren't ? And that airlines use many different models of plane ?

Maybe the policy is in there not because they absolutely know if it will interfere or not. Maybe it's there because they can't guarantee it won't.

And quite frankly if I'm thousands of feet in the air I would prefer to defer to the knowledge of the crew that's responsible for my personal well being and safety while I'm in the air. They may have a lot more experience then me after all

 

[MacMan86]

...
Maybe the policy is in there not because they absolutely know if it will interfere or not. Maybe it's there because they can't guarantee it won't.

Hasn't it been generally accepted for a long time that that's exactly it?

Much like banning the use of a mobile phone by a petrol pump and many other things.

 

[mrm3]

So unbelievably unlikely IMO. Your first assumption is that BA's apps are developed in-house by full-time developers. That's very rare for a company that doesn't concentrate heavily on mobile technologies (BA have only one app in the App Store). There's every chance they contracted the app out to an external company (it's what the majority of companies do). Should that be the case, there's no margin in BA creating a new version for a competing company - all the money would go to the external contractor.

They are developed and distributed in-house. Agree it is probably rare.

Though only one external iPhone app. (Which makes sense anyway).
But also an external app for Android, Blackberry and Windows 7 mobile.

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Okay sounds logical. I was only speculating on that anyway.

I was wrong +1's your post

So you were right. -1 him.

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Extremely unlikely that the iPads will be set to allow app store downloads.

They can.

 

[MacMan86]

They are developed and distributed in-house. Agree it is probably rare.

Though only one external iPhone app. (Which makes sense anyway).
But also an external app for Android, Blackberry and Windows 7 mobile.

Genuine question: So they have in-house developers for iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows 7 Mobile?

Would you be one of the 100 cabin crew testing this out to know all this?

 

[kdarling]

Extremely unlikely that the iPads will be set to allow app store downloads.

They can.

I'm very surprised. I wonder how long that will last once it gets past the trial

.

 

[mrm3]

Genuine question: So they have in-house developers for iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows 7 Mobile?

Would you be one of the 100 cabin crew testing this out to know all this?

Yes.

oh and no to being crew!

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I'm very surprised. I wonder how long that will last once it gets past the trial

.

Many crew have personal smart devices anyway nowadays.

 

[kdarling]

Many crew have personal smart devices anyway nowadays.

That's quite different from a company owned device containing proprietary and customer info.

Once BA Legal finds out, I bet that apps will be blocked. Probably email as well:

They'll be horrified at the thought that someone could touch a few spots and email a passenger list outside of the company.

 

[Swift]

Don't hold your breath

Hopefully, this will go a long way towards making people shut the ******* up about the iPad being nothing more than a useless toy.

A talking point does not have to be true to be repeated. It just needs to be repeated. If it sounds plausible if you don't think about it, and everybody says it, then everybody's right.

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That's a load. None of those arguments make sense, Not that many years ago when I flew the food was perfectly decent, it's gone downhill substatially due to cost cutting. Simple as that.

Food is heated all the time and is fine, that's hardly a problem, don't you have a microwave? Airline food has all sorts of smells, some strong, but it doesn't linger because the air is replaced in a plane several times an hour.

I'll attest to that. I've had some nice steaks in tourist. It has gone downhill, though.

 

[satcomer]

The worst and most self-centered idiot on the planet is the one who thinks a rule doesn't apply to them.

There are plenty of empirical reasons to believe that phones interfere with systems. Pilots over the years have reported everything from noise in their headphones (think GSM buzz times dozens of phones) to autopilots kicking off when a first class passenger turned on her phone just before landing (yes, they took it from her).

Just a month or two ago, Boeing was trying to certify an in-plane WiFi system for one of their 737 models, and discovered that the primary cockpit display panels installed in that model would go blank if the WiFi power went too high. That could be deadly. They're having the manufacturer add more shielding.

Aircraft makers simply cannot test all situations for interference. That's why it's better to be safe than sorry, and try to avoid unnecessary interference in the critical flight phases of takeoff and landing.

So you telling us that Airplane makers are not installing shielded cabling? What about Sun radiation or cosmic rays in the thin atmosphere?

 

[Steve121178]

So if the flight attendants can use 3G when the door is closed, does this mean the airlines are going to finally acknowledge the use of cell phones will not interfere with the flight of the plane? Perhaps we could all use our cell phones until we loose signal so many feet in the air.

The last thing I want on a plane is to be sitting next to some idiot who won't stop talking on the phone. Phones use should be banned, period.

Data use is ok though.

 

[kdarling]

So you telling us that Airplane makers are not installing shielded cabling? What about Sun radiation or cosmic rays in the thin atmosphere?

Nope, I didn't say any such thing. I said that makers couldn't test for every possible scenario.

Boeing has done a lot of studies of passenger PED interference. (PED = portable electronic device).

One of the things they found was that many PEDs (especially laptops and games) radiated far more than is usually assumed, from 30 - 100 times more. Ditto for power supplies:

"Boeing has tested in-seat power on eight airplanes: two 737s, one 747, two 767s, and three 777s. The number of laptops operating simultaneously in each test ranged from 32 to 245. Included with the laptops were a mixture of compact-disc players and electronic games.

"Boeing found no airplane susceptibility in these eight tests, though some emissions were found to be extremely noisy in the laboratory (up to 40 dB over the airplane equipment emission limit). The noise levels were above the airplane equipment emission levels from 150 kHz to 500 MHz.

"Even though these computers did not cause any airplane system anomalies, Boeing has observed airplane antenna receiver susceptibility from "noisy" systems with levels significantly lower than those recorded by the laptop computers used in the tests."

Boeing also noted that some newer devices operated at higher frequencies than aircraft were tested for.

Their recommendation? To be safe, continue to prohibit intentional (cell, WiFi) transmitters during all stages of flight unless the airplane has been specifically tested. Prohibit unintentional transmitters (laptops, games, etc) during critical flight phases.

I've been working with electronics for over thirty years. Interference is a tricky beast. Since I have a family, I'm with the better-safe-than-sorry crowd

 

[mrm3]

That's quite different from a company owned device containing proprietary and customer info.

Once BA Legal finds out, I bet that apps will be blocked. Probably email as well:

They'll be horrified at the thought that someone could touch a few spots and email a passenger list outside of the company.

Rest assured it is more secure (an improvement) than the standard existing industry paper format!

 

[dmr727]

I'm no EE, but I've spent a little time in the pointy end of an airplane. And in my experience - whether the plane is decades old or brand new - they all tend to exhibit random, non-reproducable bat***t crazy behavior from time to time. In most cases it's a simple matter of removing the layer of automation that's acting up and continuing on. If we have the time, we'll reset it and try again. In most cases the problem disappears. It's like having an app in OS X unexpectedly quit. What do you do? You relaunch it, and typically you don't think about it again unless it keeps happening. Same thing in an airplane. These little gremlins occur more often than people realize.

Is it buggy software? Electrical or wiring related? Or is it because someone is using an iPad in 13B? I personally don't think it's the iPad, but to an organization like the FAA (or equivalent) that's not good enough. You've gotta prove it, and there's enough doubt out there that they seem content to play it safe and keep the rules the way they are. And as kdarling said, I'd rather be safe than sorry.

 

[PracticalMac]

The worst and most self-centered idiot on the planet is the one who thinks a rule doesn't apply to them.

There are plenty of empirical reasons to believe that phones interfere with systems. Pilots over the years have reported everything from noise in their headphones (think GSM buzz times dozens of phones) to autopilots kicking off when a first class passenger turned on her phone just before landing (yes, they took it from her).

Just a month or two ago, Boeing was trying to certify an in-plane WiFi system for one of their 737 models, and discovered that the primary cockpit display panels installed in that model would go blank if the WiFi power went too high. That could be deadly. They're having the manufacturer add more shielding.

Aircraft makers simply cannot test all situations for interference. That's why it's better to be safe than sorry, and try to avoid unnecessary interference in the critical flight phases of takeoff and landing.

Yes, and why I noted not to test the system every flight (test meaning stress system in operation, not a careful, control test of system).

Given that incident, it's clear the system needs more scrutiny.


As long as the crew iPad is in flight mode, it should not cause any issues.