Recently I had time to ruminate on the availability of WiFi on aircraft. There is much written and said about this in the US, and on the face of it, it seems that this would be a Nirvana of tech. However there is a big issue with it in the short haul flights of Europe, compared to the US.. at least the little hops that are popular say between London and Paris, and London and Amsterdam. The big issue is that out of a 1 hour flight that is common within Europe, you probably only have 20 minutes to actually get your laptop up and running, and then browsing the Internet. In fact, I have seen reports via Twitter of people who have paid for the WiFi literally only to be able to send one or two tweets before the messages comes to shut the electronics down.

The big blocker here is that generally your electronics have to be off from the time you enter the departure gate and move to the plane, through to that magic ‘SeatBelts’ light goes out. Then it has to be off from the beginning of the landing procedure to the time you are into the arrival gate. This is by far the longest time of the flight.

This is even true of the slightly longer flight, not quite a real benefit to the commuter traveller. In fact the real benefit is about NOT having technology.

One thing though, the real saver is the smartphone which does not have the start up and shutdown time… for the snatched email and web browse on the ground, but then WiFi is not required for that.