You have all seen them. The little telephones placed in the back of airline seats. But how many of us have used them? Not me, I always wondered how much it would cost but never ever picked one up. Soon the European airplane manufacture Airbus will do away with such out of date technology by allowing private cell phone use on all its European flights! In an article titled "Cell phone use coming for Airbus fliers" http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6975242/ I read how Airbus is going to save people the scare resource of time!
Those long flights with nothing to do can be filled with useful conversion and constructive web time! This is a classic example of technology moving forward helping people to become more productive by filling in a small economic niche. I hope it is only a matter of time before U.S. regulations permit such a technological advance because there is a domestic demand.
2 comments:
-1 on Eric's post for a poorly formatted link.
-1 on Sam's comment for a spelling mistake.
I think you will see this, but the effect will be much larger on casual conversation. I'm guessing that most reasonable business earns marginal benefits high enough to cover the high marginal costs of current airline phone and internet access. If they reduce the marginal cost of these services, what you will see is a lot of pent up demand for low marginal benefit use of that equipment. Expect a lot more "we're taking off now", and "the food is lousy" calls on planes, and a lot less conversation with the strangers sitting near you (that's also a low marginal benefit activity that occurs now because its marginal costs are so much lower than other activities).
I personally thought that the phones that they had for use in those planes was strictly forbidden unless you were a professional business traveler. Why has it taken so long to allow cell phone useage on commercial airplanes. It seems like we should have been able to do this long ago. Well kudos to Airbus for at least pulling out there heads far enough to realize a good idea when it is so blantantly obvious.
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