but, uh, I thought....Airline Passengers Could Soon Use Cell Phones In FlightAmerican Airlines Tests New Technology...
To keep passengers from losing contact, engineers are building a communications system where calls inside an airplane would go from a cell phone to a small device that acts like a cell tower on the aircraft. The signal then travels to a satellite antenna on board, to a satellite in orbit, and then down to a relay station on the ground where your cell provider sends the call to its destination.
The projected cost for the service is less than $1 a minute.
American Airlines spokeswoman Martha Pantin said the test flight showed the calls can work.
"The people on this test flight were able make calls using Sprint technology or the phones they were lent. It went well," Pantin said.
http://www.nbc6.net/news/3605102/detail.htmlMiracles and Wondersby Alan Cabal
Before this new "Pico cell," it was nigh on impossible to make a call from a passenger aircraft in flight. Connection is impossible at altitudes over 8000 feet or speeds in excess of 230 mph.
Yet despite this, passengers Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham, Jeremy Glick and Edward Felt all managed to place calls from Flight 93 on the morning of September 11. Peter Hanson, en route to Disneyland with his wife and daughter, phoned his dad from Flight 175. Madeline Amy Sweeney, a flight attendant, made a very dramatic call from Flight 11 as it sped to the North Tower. Barbara Olson made two calls, collect, to her husband at his government office from Flight 77 as it made its way to the Pentagon.
Each call was initially reported as coming from a cellphone. Later, when skepticism reared its ugly head and the Grassy Knollers arrived, the narrative became fuzzy; it was suggested that $10-a-minute Airfones were involved. Olson was an easy candidate for Airfone (one doesn't call collect from a cell), but as the stories developed, Olson—and Felt—were said to have called from inside locked lavatories. No Airfone there.
In the very near future, numerous technological miracles and wonders will rise up out of the ashes of that terrible day, much the way the space program supposedly gave us Tang and Velcro. Satam Al-Suqami's indestructible passport, for one, is currently under the microscope in the Reverse Engineering Department at Area 51. My old passport was falling apart when I finally replaced it last year, just from spending 10 years in my pocket. His survived the destruction of the World Trade Center. I want one of those.
http://www.nypress.com/17/30/news%26columns/AlanCabal.cfm