“Good Night, Sweetie”: Now a Terrorist Transmission?

In yet another sign that exactly one airline is completely out of touch with customer-reality, the Twitterverse popped up a story today about media consultant John Battelle, who was recently stopped, on a wifi-equipped aircraft flying between New York and San Francisco, from using video chat to say “good night” to his wife and daughters.

Which airline is it? Here are some clues:

•  Citing terrorism concerns, a too-controlling flight attendant told Battelle that use of iChat with a laptop camera was a breach of aircraft security.
•  As “proof,” the FA trotted out an un-updated, pre-wifi policy manual declaring prohibitions against two-way air/ground communications by passengers.
•  This airline is SO serious about controlling wi-fi chat aboard its aircraft that it configures routers to block packets from Skype, Google Voice, and other popular services, but apparently didn’t think about Macs and iChat.

Figure it out yet? I thought you would. In the meantime, I’ll let John Battelle tell his own story. Please have a look; it’s a good read.

What to make of this, as a customer service phenomenon? Is it a typical case of 1) onboard bad-attitude, 2) poor service implementation or training, 3) rush to market with an incomplete product, or 4) some combination of all three? Is it really possible that United Airlines sees video chat as a potentially more sinister terrorist tool than say, email or text-messaging from a laptop while in flight?

Honestly, I think that this event is just a foreshadowing of more customer annoyance to come; i.e., yet another “unbundling” of a service that flyers expect to be free. My guess is that United is planning a “two-tier” wi-fi offering in its onboard services. Low-cost wi-fi for basic web browsing and email; premium wi-fi for video chat, and probably other interactive apps as well. (Gaming, anyone?)

I’m sure United didn’t want to be last out of the gates with wi-fi, but turned off telephony while its revenue wizards figure out how to over-control it, meter it, and then charge exorbitantly for its use. That iChat & Macs weren’t blocked was probably just an unintended oversight during roll-out of the service.

Hey, we can’t have those pesky Mac users creating a perception that certain things will be free, can we?

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