iPhone at 37,000 Feet

Today I flew on JetBlue’s BetaBlue plane for the first time. This is the plane that is testing limited Wifi connectivity. I was pretty disappointed actually.
The company partnered with Yahoo and Blackberry to make this happen. What?!
JetBlue is supposed to be a young, hip brand so if it was looking for a cell phone partner, wouldn’t iPhone make sense? Apple already seemed to think so.
And the company recently changed its inflight map service to Google Maps from Yahoo’s sorely underperforming and dated MapQuest.
So, BetaBlue has a low Wifi connection, so if I put iPhone on Airplane mode, and enable wifi I can access some Yahoo mobile pages (limited news, a random flickr page, and some other basic yahoo functions. But that’s it. And, a search of my contacts showed that I had NO friends on Yahoo Messenger. I’m gonna guess they are on Gmail chat. Or even AIM.
iPhone was pretty useless on BetaBlue. I don’t use a Yahoo account for email and I have no friends to talk to. Luckily, there was a nice LiveTV technician on the flight who told me I could send text messages to folks from Yahoo Messenger. Well, as I started doing that I ended up not being able to get the Messenger to work any more. Some kind of 404/343 magic error. So, then I got fed up realizing most of my friends were at work anyway and wouldn’t be responding.
Luckily this is just the Beta test, but let’s hope the real thing is just that—the real internet with all the bells and whistles that JetBlue’s young and hip audience really seeks.
Thank God they still have free TV! (I would have tried to post the entry from the sky but I don't really know how yet.... I'm learning, but I guess, as a good friend told me: Beauty fades, dumb is forever.)


Full disclosure: the writer works in the Operations department at JetBlue in Forest Hills, NY and his opinion is just that. OPINION. The writer did not work on the BetaBlue product launch and his research for this post was based solely on the pamphlets in the seatback pocket and the experience on the flight itself. The opinions in iPhone and the City certainly do not reflect any official opinions of JetBlue Airways, LiveTV or its partners and should not be considered official company information.

Serendipity is More Than Just a Tourist Trap

You should know the writer works at JetBlue. This typically wouldn't be brought up here at iPhone and the City, but, once again, within the same week I start my blog, worlds collide, and this happens:



It's a great commercial and all, and after watching this, I couldn't help but think about how much iPhone has really positioned itself to a mobile market:



Of course, paying attention to sexy news sources like The Consumerist, I found that stupid commericals like that one only yield the following results:

On one of the frequent-flier blogs, an airline pilot writes that only moments after informing his passengers of a weather-related ground hold affecting their flight to Memphis, Tenn., he and his captain received a call from one of the flight attendants. Seems an iPhone-wielding customer in the back had a challenge. "Some guy with an iPhone says the weather is good," the flight attendant says, "and wants to know what the real reason is for the delay. Is something wrong with the plane?

Reportedly, the captain responded with a public address announcement that was sharp enough to elicit audible laughter from the cabin.

"If the passenger with the iPhone would be kind enough," he began, "to use it to check the weather at our alternate airport, then calculate our revised fuel burn due to being rerouted, then call our dispatcher to arrange our amended release, then make a call to the nearest traffic control center to arrange a new slot time (among all the other aircraft carrying passengers with iPhones), we'll then be more than happy to depart. Please ring your call button to advise the flight attendant and your fellow passengers when you deem it ready and responsible for this multimillion-dollar aircraft and its 84 passengers to safely leave."

The full article is here.

At the end of the day, I couldn't help but wonder if the iPhone was making an already demanding and increasingly bitchy techno-fashionista even worse.