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« Harlem Signs Up for Wi-Fi Advice | Main | Free Trial (and Honeymoon) over in Madison? »

June 15, 2006

Give Me Wi-Fi in Flight? Give Me Power, Too

75978204 8Eff8E0A7BIn a few short months--about 18 to be exact--domestic flights will sport Internet access: But what about the power? When you finally have bits descending from the sky, how, I cry, will you keep your laptop juiced? There's a fundamental disconnect between adding wireless technologies to planes--cell eventually and Wi-Fi sooner--and then asking for more wires with which to charge your wireless units.

In fact, airlines have enormous motivations to not rewire planes. It costs a small fortune per plane, and set-back video devices have proven tremendously expensive to maintain, while people get mad when the device in front of their face is the one that's broken. There's also some concern that older forms of wiring could have been responsible for certain air crashes, such as the SwissAir flight that took the life of hundreds, including one of my college classmates and her family.

While Tesla might have said, just push electricity through the air (or, rather, ground), we haven't achieved that glorious state yet. The Inflight USB Power Unit is quite interesting as it pulls a trickle charge from the audio plug to provide minimal but useful power to handheld devices and music players. it's probably two orders of magnitude below what's needed for laptops.

There are external battery packs that typically weigh just a few pounds, but cost $200 to $400 for from three to 10 hours of additional power. A second replaceable internal battery often runs $100 or more, and provides two to four hours of additional power.

The ultimate irony is that a jetsetting road warrior (an oxymoron, I know) who makes the best use of the longest flights could find themselves packing extra gear to use a wireless connection unless they can afford the glorious business or first class sections which, on certain planes, offer an actual power feed.

3 Comments

Back in the day, there was a company called empower that created a power standard for airline seating, I think it was swallowed by Raytheon, and has since become an orphan product. There were a fair amount of laptop power adapters built to this standard, don't know what the current status is, but I found this link:
http://www.chaddickerson.com/blog/2006/05/15/laptop-power-on-planes-observations-tips-and-lessons/

United has specially configured 757's on its flights between JFK and LAX/SFO that have 110 power plugs. The flights are called "premium service"- Never been on one, but sound pretty sweet for a road warrior.

http://www.united.com/page/article/0,6722,50964,00.html

If we could only get it on ALL planes.

American used to have at least one power adapter/row, even in coach. Been a while since I've flown them, so not sure if that still holds. (cigarette lighter style)

EmPower is a is a patented and trade marked In - Seat Power system produced by a division of the Astronics corporation called Airborne Electronic Systems (AES).

In fact, many airlines around the world have recoginzed the EmPower system as a very inexpensive way to provide their pasengers with power to run their personal electronic devices i.e. laptops, mp3 players, DVD players etc.

The airline industry as a whole is in recovery and as new aircraft are being deliverd and older aircraft are in retrofit cycle, the EmPower system is being installed on many of these aircraft. (Long haul aircraft in particualr)

As a frequent flyer, you need to contact your prefered ailines and request this system be considered. Airlines are constantly reviewing the amenities that their customers demand and will absolutley consider installing the EmPower system.

To date, the EmPower system is deployed on approximately 85 airlines on somewhere around 185K seats worldwide.

Take a look at the Astronics website at www.astronics.com and click on AES. Look for the EmPower In-Seat Power System link to get a better idea of the system and how it functions.

Best regards,

Dennis