3 ms·

Yeah, I agree it’s frustrating, but I can see why they do it. 500 passengers each drawing even 1 amp each would likely put a serious strain on the aircraft’s po

by zoky 1y ago

Yeah, I agree it’s frustrating, but I can see why they do it. 500 passengers each drawing even 1 amp each would likely put a serious strain on the aircraft’s power capacity. I’ve taken to just assuming the outlets are useless and carrying a battery pack onboard. One decently sized battery pack can easily keep a laptop, phone, or whatever charged for pretty much any domestic flight, and two of them is more than plenty for international.

deathanatos 1y ago
500 is quite a bit rounded up; perhaps there is an intercontinental jumbo that big, but let's just assume your bog standard domestic 737-foo, with probably 25% the passengers. I don't know that the average passenger draws 1A; most are drawing 0¹. The point is more that advertising "we have $service", but then delivering a quality of service for $service that amounts to "unusable for any real-world use case" is bullshit. But fine, power is too hopelessly complex to actually implement in a manner that would be useful to passengers. So the WiFi: my last flight was 99% packet loss, and 7,000ms+ ping times for the 1% that was delivered. Just making it through the idiotic MitM portal was a quest, but again the resultant service is utterly unusable. The legal principle I'd point to here is "fitness for a particular purpose". The service was sold, and when it was sold, there was, in the buyer's mind, the assumption that it was fit for a particular purpose: reasonable usage of WiFi mid flight (e.g., low bandwidth, tolerably high latency uses; I'm not expecting to be able to game or stream a movie) or to power a portable device one might find in the average person's carry-on. But it's just something between false advertising and enshittification. The airlines want to deliver a service, perhaps at one time they did, but they've not employed the people necessary to maintain it, and when the customer is shorted, there's zero recourse for the customer. ¹… of course, I end up being one of those drawing 0 since, you know, the fucking outlet is broken.

by zoky 1y ago

deathanatos 1y ago

500 is quite a bit rounded up; perhaps there is an intercontinental jumbo that big, but let's just assume your bog standard domestic 737-foo, with probably 25% the passengers. I don't know that the average passenger draws 1A; most are drawing 0¹. The point is more that advertising "we have $service", but then delivering a quality of service for $service that amounts to "unusable for any real-world use case" is bullshit. But fine, power is too hopelessly complex to actually implement in a manner that would be useful to passengers. So the WiFi: my last flight was 99% packet loss, and 7,000ms+ ping times for the 1% that was delivered. Just making it through the idiotic MitM portal was a quest, but again the resultant service is utterly unusable. The legal principle I'd point to here is "fitness for a particular purpose". The service was sold, and when it was sold, there was, in the buyer's mind, the assumption that it was fit for a particular purpose: reasonable usage of WiFi mid flight (e.g., low bandwidth, tolerably high latency uses; I'm not expecting to be able to game or stream a movie) or to power a portable device one might find in the average person's carry-on. But it's just something between false advertising and enshittification. The airlines want to deliver a service, perhaps at one time they did, but they've not employed the people necessary to maintain it, and when the customer is shorted, there's zero recourse for the customer. ¹… of course, I end up being one of those drawing 0 since, you know, the fucking outlet is broken.