I-Pad and commercial flying...

[MEdwards]

Thanks for the info, Eric. Your map of landings is neat.

Mike E

[Bill Greenwood]

We have a big convention here called Idea Fest, that brings many business, political, and academic people here as well as some just folks if they pay the fee, It is sort of to discuss the ideas of the major issues of the present and future. It ranges from some smart people, to just the famous like Opra to some real pigs like Karl Rove, They pretty much all like to play here to get away from the heat and hassle of some big city.
The CEO of United Airlines was here, and said two main things: that air fares into and out of here were going to stay high, and that obviously using personal electronic devices on an airline, did not affect anything, despite the b s that the FAA has put out about it for years, otherwise "airplanes would be falling out of the sky". He said some change of policy may be coming from the FAA, but what I think is that it is really hard for a govt buearacracy to ever admit that they have been wrong about anything; their natural way is to try to save face.
United has almost a monopoly on air service here, and what I think is that fares would go down the day that Southwest started to compete with United.
It is about 200 air miles to Denver, about 25 min on a United CRJ, and last time I checked the round trip fare in peak ski season was $1260 with no advance purchase.

[Mayhemxpc]

The real issue is transmission, not reception. That said, there are a lot of things in an airplane that will interfere with that reception. That includes the fine metallic mesh imbedded in the windshields to protect them from icing over. Even with regard to receive-only, experience with my three adolescent sons has given me new insight into why electronic devices should be restricted below 10,000 feet. Someone locked into his video game to the exclusion of all else will become oblivious to any potential emergency. (Oh, surely that will never happen to me! Probably not. But it could apply to the jerk who managed to get the exit row seat ahead of you.) Post accident reports say that if you are relying on the flight attendants to facilitate emergency egress and other services, you will be out of luck. Besides, if you can't live without your electronic devices in the first and last ten minutes of flight, you have other problems.

All of the above notwithstanding, on my next domestic commercial flight, I think I will try to slip my Stratus into the seat pocket in front of me and see see how well Foreflight with ADS-B In works (above 10k feet, that is.)