Qantas to Provide iPads to Passengers
The Canberra Times is reporting that passengers on Australia’s Qantas Airways Boeing 767 planes will be provided with iPads to access more than 200 hours of streamed entertainment. The service will be free when it rolls out later this year, but no, you don’t get to keep the iPad. The big advantage to Qantas — other than happier customers — is the removal of existing inflight entertainment systems whose roughly two-ton weight increases fuel use and consumes valuable under-seat space.
I was just in Australia last week, and one of the "Qantas family" carriers, JetStar, is already renting these on their flights for about $10. Seemed to be a nice offering of content - it will be interesting to see if this catches on elsewhere. For free, I'd grab one in a second. Seems like managing several hundred iPads *per plane* could be a challenge - keeping them charged due to the long charge times for iPads could be tricky, not to mention the space to plug in 300 iPads.
It's probably just a typo, but there's no 'u' in Qantas Adam. It's an acronym that's become a word; Queensland And Northern Territory Air Service.
Gah! I was so careful in the headline, and then totally spaced in the text. My fingers really can't type a Q without a following U. Fixed now. :-)
Some of the Qantas flights can top 14 or 15 hours, such as Sydney-Dallas. This will tax even the best iPad batteries, though the Boeing 767 may be used for shorter flights.
The article talked only about Qantas domestic flights, which will be quite a lot shorter. I agree that if they were going longer, they'd need some sort of seat-based charging technology (which wouldn't be amiss anyway!).
A tonne (in the article) is not a ton (in the blurb), but close enough. :)
I was wondering if anyone was going to call me on that. :-)
http://grammarist.com/spelling/ton-tonne/