WiFi Internet Access on Planes

AirTran announced that it will offere WiFi Internet access on flights. What a cool thing. We can tweet while in the air now. All joking aside, it is high time for this. In the age of ultimate productivity, we cannot afford to spend valuable time on planes reading magazines. This is especially true when traveling across the country.
My big question is about the WiFi devices themselves. We have been told for years that we cannot turn on electronic devices because they will somehow cause the plane to be involuntarily redirected to Tahiti even if that wasn’t where you were headed.

Now, I would love nothing more than going to Tahiti.  But that’s just me.  How is it that AirTran can get their planes to the right destination with WiFi signals all over the place?  And let’s not forget the Internet signal itself traveling from the plane to the ground or satelite or whereever it goes.  How does that work?

I find it particularly annoying that we’ve ben told this nonsense about phones and other devices interfering with a plane’s navigation equipment.  It is nonsense.  Mythbusters attempted to test this theory but were unable to truly prove or disprove it because they were not allowed to use devices on planes. They tried using some small planes and were unable to detect any effect.  These small planes are not the same as the commercial jet so it wasn’t a good test.

Now we know the answer.  These devices have no effect.  None.  Probably never have.  The entire plane could have an army of devices in use and the plane would still not get redirected to Tahiti. Darn.

So get on a plane and fire up your laptop, phone, iPods, netbooks, Wii and whatever else you can bring along. Connect them all to the Internet. If we can’t be productive on a flight, at least let’s make it not boring.