Virgin Atlantic: texting at 35,000 feet
updated 03:05 pm EDT, Tue August 8, 2006
Virgin Atlantic Texting
Airlines are usually skittish about letting passengers use anything that might transmit to the outside world during a flight. That's increasingly at odds with a society that sees a few hours of silence as time wasted. Virgin Atlantic is offering at least a partial solution: in the near future, it will let people onboard its flights send text messages through terminals in the seat backs to ask questions of an answer service on the ground. You'll be able to ask for advice on what entertainment you'll find at your destination, for example. The intent, says Virgin, is to give passengers more to do on their flights than they're used to, and thus more reasons to choose the same airline for the next flight.
