Eastbay1K

I can't wait for those who manage to use every last remaining ounce of juice onboard to have no way to call/text their ride "I'm here" once they land!

Chugach

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 7_0_3 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/537.51.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.0 Mobile/11B511 Safari/9537.53)

My wife was on a flight once where someone decided to have a skype conversation, sans headphones, at 38,000 feet. I think this was before Gogo started slowing down video streaming sites. It never fails to amaze me how air travel continues to bring out the sheer stupidity of some people.

Points Scrounger

Permit me to haul out my tale from a decade ago of the guy in the seat in front of me who spent almost the entire JFK - LAX flight on the Airfone. After that experience, I can assure fellow readers you Do Not Want mobile phone calls in flight!

baliktad

One other thought I hadn't really considered: this change is effectively a devaluation of Alaska's DigEPlayers. Because these are only handed out after 10K feet and collected as early as 40 minutes prior to landing, customers using DigE's will be shortchanged an hour or more of personal entertainment time compared to using a personal laptop, tablet, or portable music player.

I'm glad AS has already announced plans for at-seat power. I'm going to need it now more than ever.

tod701

My understanding is that the phone companies were against it because it would really clog up their networks due to the connections jumping between cells every few seconds.

Points Scrounger

If the rest of the airlines have this in place this month, Alaska will look rather ridiculous waiting until "early 2014." Whether they actually care about that is another matter.

rybob1

I think maybe we are jumping to conclusions. While I'm anxious to see the policy change, and a bit disappointed it is going to take longer than other airlines have promised, its a bit presumptions to say early 2014. AFAIK, Alaska hasn't really provided any dates around when the devices will be permitted. "Take some time" could mean a couple days/weeks, or it could mean a year.

Points Scrounger

A couple of carriers are saying they can do it almost immediately, but AS mentions "further testing" -- as a non-tech person it seems odd that JetBlue can accomplish that aspect (pretty much) immediately, but Alaska would need weeks? They can send out a broadcast message to flight crews any time, without needing hardcopies of manual pages; that excuse I'm not buying. All they needed to say to satisfy me was: "We have no firm date, but expect to be able implement the revised regulations fairly quickly."

Eastbay1K

I am not quite sure what the BFD is for the "rush to be first." No one's lives are going to be materially affected if the policy goes into place tomorrow, or a month from tomorrow. I'd also expect that policies related to "inclement weather, all off @ FL100" are going to occur more on AS than on other airlines.

Also, sometimes it makes sense to take a look and breathe and re-review a hastily-written policy that needs to be approved by the FAA prior to submission. It also makes sense to take a look and breathe and re-review a hastily-written policy (even if it would satisfy the FAA) to determine if it needs tweaking, so that there isn't a policy effective next week, and then it is modified a month later, causing nothing but confusion to the traveling public and the flight crews.

Like it or not, administratively, this "simple policy" isn't as simple as it appears.

Eastbay1K

That is reasonable!

Points Scrounger

The reason I'm belaboring this is that the other carriers are falling in line to get this done almost immediately, but I'm inferring that there's something about the AS fleet where their planes need extensive testing (review) and the rest of the world's aircraft don't? There isn't a great rush exactly, but having AS lag more than a week or two behind (almost) everyone else makes little sense, unless there's a very specific reason that they're a "special" case?

MonThruThurs

As Brian Regan once joked about first class and having computers and calculators out, "we're making money right now!"

Personally, I liked not having electronics out during the most critical phases of a flight. All it takes is one person with their head up their a** to let their ipad fly from their hands due to aircraft movement or not be paying attention when something important happens.

I assume tray tables will still have to remain up? This seems like it's going to be tough for AS to enforce when electronics get in the mix.

ANC

unless AS has a long term contract with those guys I dont expect digi players to be around in 3 years. Even less maybe depending on how quickly the in seat power is installed. Its being killed from both sides. AS keeps raising the rental price and more and more passengers have their own personal entertainment devices. I believe the days of that heavy bulky digiplayer are numbered

beckoa

Wirelessly posted (beckoa's BB: Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9810; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.1.0.694 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

Dige player went up in cost with new player but was dropped later on IIRC.

beckoa

Wirelessly posted (beckoa's BB: Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9810; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.1.0.694 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

I think I'm ok with AS not being the first ones here. Let other carriers be guinea pigs...