Greedy Air NZ to allow calls, texts on new plane

Forums › Travel (planes, train, cruise) › Greedy Air NZ to allow calls, texts on new plane

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#436489 7-Feb-2011 19:33

jjnz1: A while ago, (ok maybe almost a decade), Vodafone had this thing where if you were on prepaid, and you ran out of credit, you could still text and use gprs for a few hours until the system kicked in.

Does this apply now?

If so, I might just book a flight, swap my sim for a prepaid one with $20 on it and download until it stops. I might get 1 GB if i'm lucky.

Around 5+ years since this was possible.

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#436498 7-Feb-2011 19:37

richms:
Beccara: Now thats likely to get you put on a black list :P If not arrested

Actually yeah, the one that "a friend" has looks more like a remote for something terrorist related with its antennas and just one button and looking like the case came off the shelf from a cheap project box case shop ;)

Whats to stop people connecting to the ground based networks if they are in a window seat? Last time I flew there was quite a few occasions when I got some XT signal while flying.

Thats a good question! Maybe the cell-site would be displaying it's self to phones as the 3 main networks and as such the phones wont attempt a ground connect?

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#436500 7-Feb-2011 19:41

richms: Whats to stop people connecting to the ground based networks if they are in a window seat? Last time I flew there was quite a few occasions when I got some XT signal while flying.

Well the phone would attach to the strongest signal and that is not going to be a cell 10,000 feet below the plane

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#436502 7-Feb-2011 19:48

That assumes that the cellsite is broadcasting the carriers "code" (name escapes me right now) no? If so it would require consent from the carrier to do so.

I also hope there is an activation process to avoid someone leaving their phone on and getting a call midflight

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#436510 7-Feb-2011 19:56

Is the cargo area outside coverage of the onboard signal? Do they carry mail on planes nationally at all? Would be annoyed if I was sending something with a GPS tracker in it and it clocked up lots of data when it was in flight on the plane. Then again last time I tried a GPS tracker in a parcel it ran flat before it even left auckland.

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#436524 7-Feb-2011 20:17

richms: Is the cargo area outside coverage of the onboard signal? Do they carry mail on planes nationally at all? Would be annoyed if I was sending something with a GPS tracker in it and it clocked up lots of data when it was in flight on the plane. Then again last time I tried a GPS tracker in a parcel it ran flat before it even left auckland.

I thought most consumer grade GPS devices will not work above a certain height and speed as they are unable to recalculate satellite signals based on variances over 7 degrees.

I am also sure there exists some international regulations regarding this to help prevent home made missiles etc.

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#436526 7-Feb-2011 20:19

This post has been edited. Click here to see previous versions

Haha new feature, great!

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#436528 7-Feb-2011 20:20

I was more interested in where it was on the ground. Hell, I dont even know if it went by plane. But if it did and attached to the inflight network and used that to sms at 80c instead of best mate at 0c, I would have been very annoyed.

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#436529 7-Feb-2011 20:21

jjnz1:
richms: Is the cargo area outside coverage of the onboard signal? Do they carry mail on planes nationally at all? Would be annoyed if I was sending something with a GPS tracker in it and it clocked up lots of data when it was in flight on the plane. Then again last time I tried a GPS tracker in a parcel it ran flat before it even left auckland.

I thought most consumer grade GPS devices will not work above a certain height and speed as they are unable to recalculate satellite signals based on variances over 7 degrees.

I am also sure there exists some international regulations regarding this to help prevent home made missiles etc.

Not sure about that, I've had an accurate GPS lock at 23,000 ft on a Motorola Milestone before. You might be thinking of the Civie/Mill accuracy difference that were switched over last decade

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#436559 7-Feb-2011 21:13

Beccara: Why?

I don't understand why people hold planes as some sacred place where thou shalt not talk. Trains, Bus's and Everywhere else allow you to talk and text as much as you want. Why not planes?

Has anyone considered the economic benefit that would result in less wasted man hours if a company could have its people working while in the air?

I think we dispelled the myth of them crashing planes years if not decades ago so I see no reason not to allow them

Because airplanes seem to have rather a lot of 'listen to me - arent I really important' people on them. AirNZ could make extra money selling airplugs so you dont have to listen to the dickheads talking the entire flight!

Seriously - havent you heard the inane chatter that takes place when the 40 minute flight lands and all the mobiles go on?...

As someone else said - you cant move away on a plane - YOU ARE TRAPPED!

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#436567 7-Feb-2011 21:34

jjnz1:
This post has been edited. Click here to see previous versions

Haha new feature, great!

But only you see your edits. This link won't work for anyone else, except moderators.

You should look around the Geekzone subforum, there are notices of a few new features there.

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#436571 7-Feb-2011 21:42

the only thing that concerns me, and I'm pretty sure I have noo reason to be worried, is the chance of somebody on the ground accidentally locking onto the plane signal and unwittingly being charged a gajillion dollars for watching keyboardcat on youtube. this has been known to happen with the cellsites on cruise ships being picked up by people on land in whilst port.

I would imagine though that the power of the airplane cell site would only have a range of a few tens of metres so people on the ground could not pick it up.
But if it accidentally got left on whilst the plane was at the departure gate though that could prove pretty expensive for some people

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#436583 7-Feb-2011 22:20

robjg63:
Beccara: Why?

I don't understand why people hold planes as some sacred place where thou shalt not talk. Trains, Bus's and Everywhere else allow you to talk and text as much as you want. Why not planes?

Has anyone considered the economic benefit that would result in less wasted man hours if a company could have its people working while in the air?

I think we dispelled the myth of them crashing planes years if not decades ago so I see no reason not to allow them

Because airplanes seem to have rather a lot of 'listen to me - arent I really important' people on them. AirNZ could make extra money selling airplugs so you dont have to listen to the dickheads talking the entire flight!

Seriously - havent you heard the inane chatter that takes place when the 40 minute flight lands and all the mobiles go on?...

As someone else said - you cant move away on a plane - YOU ARE TRAPPED!

Your trapped on bus's and train's aswell, Trapped somewhat at dinner/lunch with someone talking.

Yeah you get the few that are waaaay to loud/might be going deaf one the phone but the chatter you get at the end of the flight is what happens with you cut 300odd people off from the world for an hour. spread it out thru the flight and it's alot less.

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#436591 7-Feb-2011 22:31

Beccara: I think we dispelled the myth of them crashing planes years if not decades ago so I see no reason not to allow them

Actually it's not a myth that cellphone signals can interfere with the navigation signals on an aircraft, it can and does happen and in the right circumstances could cause a crash. Don't believe all you see on Myth Busters.

The on board cell site allows phones to run at a much lower power output thus reducing/stopping interference.

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#436617 7-Feb-2011 23:32

What set of circumstances? All passenger airliners have electrical system have EMF shielding, VOR beacon's run on 100-200mhz range and the DME systems which are the closest to cell ranges run about 40mhz out of the cell bands.

Hell at flight school updates to our flight plans in 172's werent doing via 025 cell's mounted in the cockpit.

There is currently no crash in aviation history where cellphone's have been attributed to the crash or even contributed to the crash. The closest thing to a link is a UK report stating that cellphone's (Of the AMPS kind I believe) operating near the flight deck could in theory affect DME beacon reception if the shielding on that system was not maintained correctly.

Even BOEING have said they have never been able to cause a fault/issue in an correctly operating aircraft with cellphones

The best anyone's able to have come up with is the old GSM speaker buzz in the pilot's headset if once again shielding on the electrical systems was not maintained correctly. I've got my PPL and have seen pilot's flying low alt on the phone for 10-20-30min's at a time often, No pilot I know has ever reported any adverse affect and it seems neither have plane makers!

There was legitimate fear back in the day that AMP's phone's could cause problems and it was mainly based around DME beacon's used for IFR that a cheap phone could cause RF bleed over into the DME bands which is one of the main reasons for the ban coming into affect, I think about 94 a new set of standards came out for EMF shielding on planes to counter this but as we've come alone we've found that new GSM phones and TDMA/CDMA didn't have the same issue's even with the old spec.

In short, please show me a JAA/CAA/NTSB report citing cellphone's as a factor in a crash or in even an in-flight incident, Because nobody I know has ever heard of it and google is only coming back with "theories" from those outside the industry

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