Imagine if you were quietly sitting on the plane, along with your laptop of course, and the pilot asks if there’s anyone on board with a laptop equipped with Wi-Fi? It would feel a bit bizarre would it not?
I mean you can understand if a doctor, midwife or even a nurse is called for, but what on earth could a pilot want with a laptop and Wi-Fi, pretty alarming really.
Well this is exactly what happened to a guy called Evan at Newark Airport, New York USA, who has detailed his experience on his blog.
Evan’s plane was apparently sitting on the Tarmac waiting for take off but there were queues of planes in front and his had been sitting there for quite some time.
“Wow. There is a very real possibility we’re not going to be able to go tonight. The pilot just told us he has “no idea when or if we’re going anywhere tonight” Evan wrote.
He continues “The A/C has been turned off. We’ve been parked on the tarmac for two hours now. Apparently a new federal law says that if we are here for five hours without moving we go back to the gate”.
“I was just called into the flight deck because I have a Wi-Fi card and the pilot used my laptop to try and find a new route!!!” he blogged at the time. “It was worth the delay” he adds.
Evan explains the day after the event that the pilot of that plane knew that there were storms in the area to the West and the South that were affecting all air traffic leaving out of Newark and he wanted to see if he could find a new route bypassing the storms which he could then clear with Air Traffic Control.
“There is no mechanism on a 737-500 to look at weather. The radar they have only works in flight, and even then it can’t show what’s happening outside of about 50 miles” he wrote.
“We were 50th—yes 50th—on line for takeoff and the captain said that at that point air traffic control really does not care anymore. Their number one priority is international flights, then they get to domestic.”
No, the only option was for the pilot to find a laptop with Wi-Fi, then access the Intellicast website and find another route himself hence the reason Evan found himself in the cockpit.
Yep, I’m sure Evan will get a lot of mileage out of that exciting story. Personally, I find the whole thing rather unnerving.
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And any pilot (even a newbie such as myself) finds the story to be full of holes. Airlines apparently have their own staff to handle the flight plans (and yes, they are quite capable of doing so). Furthermore, regardless of the weather, a new route wouldn’t suddenly allow them to jump the queue either.
He also stated he was an internet marketer, so I STRONGLY suspect it has been posted to get attention, or/and is greatly exaggerated.
Why would other airlines sit back idling if it was a quick 10 minute job to “jump the queue”?