This email from a BOL listener was read on the Buzz Out Loud podcast #714…
Dear Buzzards,
I was in the cockpit over the eastern U.S. the other day and decided to take out my laptop and look up some technical data on the 737 I was flying. At the unnamed American Airline I fly for we have recently begun carrying our manuals in digital format. When I booted up I noticed that wireless networks were available. This is quite common and is usually someone’s laptop in the cabin. Just out of curiosity, however, I opened up the Wi-Fi window and saw that the signal was from an aircraft with Wi-Fi service that was flying just above and ahead of us. I knew it was from that airplane because the signal identified itself as being from a particular U.S. airline, (which will also remain unnamed), that has Wi-Fi service and we heard their call sign on our frequency. That got me thinking about the proposed balloon network you talked about a while back and I was wondering if you couldn’t come up with an airline mesh network. Our airline alone has more than 2,500 flights a day and the sky is always packed with airliners. Have you ever had to sit in the air an extra hour in a holding pattern because there were too many airplanes in a given block of airspace ahead of you? ATC is always having to speed up, slow down and vector traffic to maintain legal separation. If all those airliners were equipped to create a mesh network you could easily defer the cost of the equipment as well as compensate the airlines for the service. It might even help keep travel costs down. Maybe it’s silly but it seems as valid an idea as balloons.
Keep up the good work,
Vic the Texas Pilot Rancher
Too bad its probably a long shot for a mesh network like that to become a reality.
