Geek Thoughts

Connexion by Boeing is long dead. Now SITA and Airbus are trying a similar venture - Called OnAir - to allow passengers Internet access and - unfortunately - mobile phone access while en route to their destination.

Personally, I love to have Internet access on a long haul flight. But mobile phones? Please. I can’t imagine that a hundred stupid passengers calling their relatives would make for a relaxing flight. They’d have meaningful conversations like:

“We are on our way to Thailand!” (Yes, well, so you are one of a million, who gives a damn?)

“Yeah we are now over the ocean!” (And have been for an hour you baffoon…)

“Oh the food is terrible!” (Now there’s news…)

“This plane is really full, and we don’t have much room for our feet!” (Tell me about it…)

“Susy sends her regards!” (Can’t she just write a postcard instead of annoying me?)

Lufthansa have got it right. They’ve recognized that most (intelligent?) passengers would rather have their peace and quiet, and won’t allow mobile phones to be used on their flights.

As talks between the EU and US about data transmissions about plane passengers have run into problems, the BBC has an interesting article which includes all the data fields that the United States want to know about passengers - and which, until know, seem to have been transferred to them by airlines:

• Information about the passenger: name; address; date of birth; passport number; citizenship; sex; country of residence; US visa number (plus date and place issued); address while in the US; telephone numbers; e-mail address; frequent flyer miles flown; address on frequent flyer account; the passenger’s history of not showing up for flights
• Information about the booking of the ticket: date of reservation; date of intended travel; date ticket was issued; travel agency; travel agent; billing address; how the ticket was paid for (including credit card number); the ticket number; which organisation issued the ticket; whether the passenger bought the ticket at the airport just before the flight; whether the passenger has a definite booking or is on a waiting list; pricing information; a locator number on the computer reservation system; history of changes to the booking
• Information about the flight itself: seat number; seat information (eg aisle or window); bag tag numbers; one-way or return flight; special requests, such as requests for special meals, for a wheelchair, or help for an unaccompanied minor
• Information about the passenger’s itinerary: other flights ticketed separately, or data on accommodation, car rental, rail reservations or tours.
• Information about other people: the group the passenger is travelling with; the person who booked the ticket

Welcome to the brave new world of surveillance…

I was just checking my site statistics, and I found that someone using Connexion by Boeing had accessed this website in June. That wasn’t me, of course. So I was very curious how someone might have found me from up in the air.

It turns out the person was googling for LH422. Presumably he or she was on the way to Detroit and googled for the plane he was in.

I’ll salute you, Sir, whoever you are! That was a truely Geeky thing to do - Hats off.

As a call back to the lessons I learned from my Kuala Lumpur trip, I now have a new digicam. After mulling over the decision to buy a new camera for some time, I finally did buy the Sony Cybershot DSC-T9 digital camera. I’ve put a review of the T9 over at my Geek World website. In short, the T9 doesn’t make perfect images, but the form factor is pretty cool. You really can carry this camera everywhere.

I might still buy a more “professional” camera later.

I am pleased to announce that my departure went without a hitch. I am currently about half-way to Detroit, blogging at 11500 meters above the Atlantic Ocean. I am connected via Lufthansa’s on-board Internet plan. It’s 27 US$ for the entire flight, but of course I just had to give it a try. It does work fairly well, but as expected it’s pretty slow. There are also disconnections now and then. It’s easy to set up (you really don’t have to configure much except disable your proxy settings, and set your notebook to use the Connexion WLAN) and well documented via the Lufthansa on-board magazine.

I don’t think anything gets filtered out. I am ssh’ing to my private servers without problems, so you could always tunnel whatever you want to access. Since anybody on the plane can listen in on what you’re doing, and since the connectivity is run by Boeing and thus routed via Seattle, using some form of encryption (vpn, ssh, whatever) is a very good idea. I’m still blogging directly though - but I’ll have to look into setting up an SSL host for this sort of thing.

Unless you’re on a budget, it’s pretty neat to have Internet on board an airplane. I think I am getting used to it pretty quickly… hopefully, other airlines will offer comparable solutions.

Finally, as an aside: If you book Business Class, you even get a power socket for your notebook. This isn’t available in Economy, however.

I always take photos when I travel, but my trip to Kuala Lumpur was the first in a long time during which I made a serious effort to create a travelogue. The only other trip I managed to do so was our Disneyland Paris trip in 2004. Unfortunately, I am not very well equipped these days to handle serious geek travel. Now that I am back home I asked myself: What do I need for my next trip?

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