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February 11, 2006
When public becomes too public
On the flight from Frankfurt to San Francisco, I got a seat in one of the exit rows, meaning plenty of leg space. Sitting between a chemist on his way to Stanford to play with the SLAC and a guy from Encirq - a startup in the embedded space - made for some interesting in-flight conversations.
Speaking of which, passengers have the possibility of listening in to the cockpit communications on channel 9. This public service is pretty interesting (if you're into that sort of thing) until things become public that you may not want to hear.
I certainly wasn't particularly happy hearing the patched-in cabin-communications describing a "level one threat" from a passenger somewhere behind me. By accident the whole internal communication about the matter (including the pilot telling the cabin-crew he wasn't going to open the cockpit door anytime soon) was "live on channel 9". Until one of the passengers pointed this out to a member of the crew and the channel was shut down. Evidently the passenger became a threat by acting strangely near the lavatory.
Oh and one more thing. Next time you're on a plane - make sure you give the stewardess the eye - yepp, flirt with her for all its worth. You see, one of the reasons given for the guy being a threat was "he avoided my eye-contact".
Posted by Matthew at February 11, 2006 09:41 PM