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Airport iPads are Getting Smarter

February 26, 2013 at 8:35 AM | by | Comments (0)

It wasn’t that long ago that iPads invaded the airport, and we’re not just talking about the personal ones used by travelers. Restaurants have embraced the new technology, as they’ve been quick to add ordering abilities to the tablets as well as stuff like nutrition information and wine lists. Well now it looks like the iPads might just be doing a little more than taking orders. Be sure to say please and thank you, as the iPads are now talking back.

OTG Management—they’re responsible for airport restaurants all over the place—is upgrading their iPad offerings, as they claim to be the first to introduce multi-language support to their airport systems. Things are starting off at a couple restaurants up in Toronto, as it looks like Fetta Panini Bar and Heirloom Bakery Café inside Toronto Pearson International Airport are the first to graduate from the foreign language program.

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Qantas' New In-Flight iPads are Boss

Where: Australia
February 15, 2013 at 9:32 AM | by | Comments (0)

Yesterday we talked about Qantas' comfy new black leather business-class seats, but the real champion of the overhauled airplane is the in-flight entertainment system. We have mentioned Q Streaming before and we're excited to get our hands on the technology.

Not for lack of trying, we have been on a few planes with the hopes of discovering an Apple iPad in the seat-back pocket all to be disappointed. As soon as we turned the corner to board the plane and saw the product logo right next to the door, admittedly, our heart skipped a beat. We can finally catch up on a few episodes of Modern Family directly streamed to the device over a WiFi network.

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Why You'll Want to Stream While Scooting at 35,000'

Where: Singapore
January 30, 2013 at 10:28 AM | by | Comments (0)

Our winner of the 2012 best travel newcomer award has just given us even more reason to love them. This week, newish Singapore-based budget airline Scoot introduced their in-flight streaming of entertainment to passenger gadgets.

If you can remember back when we flew them, we noted how great it was to be handed an iPad loaded up with TV shows, movies and games to keep us entertained on our medium-haul flight. Now, if you are one of those travelers who wouldn't even think about traveling without your iPad or Android tablet, you can get the hours of in-flight entertainment streamed directly to that device.

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FCC Tells FAA to Get Moving on In-Flight Electronics Rules

December 14, 2012 at 1:11 PM | by | Comments (0)

We were going to spin an entire post out of a throwaway line published in The Hill last week, where the journalist dropped in a half-sentence about how "most passengers" want to use cell phones in the air. Polls have over and over again shown the exact opposite, with almost the only exception being a Fly.com poll that seemed more about publishing a press release than figuring out what people believe. But we're not sure it's fair to inflict our travel-journalist-nerd-bravado on you guys just because we can.

So instead we're going to point out what is true in that Hill story, which is that the FCC is pushing the FAA to permit more in-flight electronics use.

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FAA Spending Year Reviewing Electronics Rules, Not Doing Anything About Them

August 29, 2012 at 3:33 PM | by | Comments (0)

Last March New York Times tech blogger Nick Bilton called up the FAA for a boilerplate story about the agency's silly takeoff/landing electronics rules, which currently force travelers to deactivate their Kindles, laptops, mp3 players, etc whenever a plane is below 10,000 feet. Instead of being told to go pound sand—because the FAA is a government agency, so shut up—Bilton was told that the agency would take a "fresh look" at the requirements. Hooray for government!

This week the FAA finally got around to starting to maybe think about loosening the requirements. So that was half a year gone. Their announced plan is to form "a government-industry group," made up of "representatives from the mobile technology and aviation manufacturing industries, pilot and flight attendant groups, airlines, and passenger associations," to study the issue. The group will convene months from now and then meet for another six months. Boo for government!

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All Kinds of News out of the Red Roo, Qantas

Where: Australia
July 27, 2012 at 10:52 AM | by | Comments (0)

The past few weeks, the folks at Qantas have been pumping out news story after news story. It's hard to keep up with it all, so we will try to fit it all in here. The Australian airline has improved service on some aircraft, released an entirely new commercial and have been trying to make some more friends in the region to expand their network.

Firstly, lets talk tech. After running a new in-flight entertainment trial on select Boeing 767 service, the Red Roo has decided to launch it across all flights served by the aircraft. In addition to iPads for everyone on the plane, each tablet is fitted to wirelessly stream, via Q-Streaming, 200 hours of movies and TV shows for added enjoyment. The first of the aircraft will be flying come October. Best of all? It's free for everyone!

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Air Nigeria is Taking the iPad 3 to 35,000-Feet

Where: Nigeria
July 17, 2012 at 9:55 AM | by | Comments (0)

At this point it’s pretty clear that airlines love the iPad. We’ve seen a couple different carriers here and there load them up, as it’s a quick and easy way to install plenty of in-flight entertainment without sending an airplane into the hangar for a refreshment and refurbishment. Now Air Nigeria is doing the same, and they seem to be one the first to utilize the iPad 3—we mean the new iPad.

IFE Services is the company behind the tablet distribution, as they’ve been selected to partner with Air Nigeria as the new in-flight entertainment provider. Right now it sounds like the touch screen fun is coming to just the airline’s Airbus A330 fleet, and passengers situated up in business class will be the ones handling the brand new Apple drives.

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Over 7,000 iPads Coming to an Airport Restaurant Near You

June 11, 2012 at 9:26 AM | by | Comments (0)

There are plenty of iPads heading to an airport near you, and the tablets are ready for your poking, swiping, and playing pleasure. The company behind plenty of airport restaurants and dining establishments—OTG Management—has just placed a pretty big iPad order, and they’re bringing around 7,000 of the devices to their restaurants just to keep you a little more entertained.

Of course you’ll be able to order up an appetizer, entrée, and dessert, but when you’re done spending money the iPads will also be yours for surfing the web, playing games, and generally screwing around on the Internet. Company officials are claiming that this is one of the biggest rollouts of iPads outside of Apple utilizing them in their own stores—impressive.

We’re already familiar with some of these options that are already doing their thing at New York-LaGuardia, and it sounds like the airport is lined up to receive another 2,000 or so. Minneapolis-St. Paul—one of our favorites—is next in line to get the iPads as well as Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. The plan is to update the iPads every year or so, as OTG Management wants things to be the latest and greatest version.

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'Please Turn Off and Stow Electronics' to Become Thing of the Past

March 23, 2012 at 3:26 PM | by | Comments (0)

In a little-noticed move last December, the FAA decided to allow pilots to use their iPads in the cockpit "even during takeoff and landing." The idea was that the pilots could use their tablets as "electronic flight bags," which we're not sure is a real thing but it's what THE FAA said so there you go.

You can easily see, however, why people at the time found the whole thing a little strange. The FAA doesn't allow passengers to use any personal electronics, including tablets like iPads or e-readers like Kindles, during takeoff and landing. The ostensible justification for the ban is that those devices might interfere with a plane's navigation system. And yet here was a new rule allowing pilots to use their tablets literally in the cockpit, all but on top of the plane's oh-so-delicate navigation system. The logic seemed strained.

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Do Not Stow That iPad; Qantas' New Q-Streaming Starts Now

Where: Australia
January 27, 2012 at 11:03 AM | by | Comments (0)

What do you do when you find an Apple iPad in the seat-back pocket? Naturally, watch hours and hours of the newest television and movies. Duh.

This week, Qantas announced testing of their new in-flight entertainment system. We've already talked about the technology the Australian airline brings to cabins both domestically and internationally, and this news is an even more important cog in the wheel.

The fresh entertainment system is called Q Streaming, and it's being trialed on one aircraft at the moment. The technology allows passengers to stream, on demand, the entire portfolio of Qantas entertainment to an on-board iPad. Both business and economy customers can spend the majority of their flight with their eyes glued to the 10-inch screen.

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Ryanair Now Giving Interviews on Mountain Goats and Porn

November 9, 2011 at 4:42 PM | by | Comments (0)

If you were going to do a chart of all the obnoxious ways that Irish LCC Ryanair tries to get media attention, first of all it would be an awkwardly large chart. Second, it would have to cover - at a minimum - the ads that are tasteless, the ads that are sexist, the ads that are sexist and tasteless. Then you would have to cover their heavy-handed intentionally sensational "news" announcements, which usually revolve around things they're never going to do and almost always involve bodily fluids. So bathroom fees and toilets, mostly.

Sex and pee pee. That's what their PR people usually bring to the table. And now, a new bodily fluid to add the chart: semen! How innovative. How risque.

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