11 comments on “JetBlue Energy?!

  1. I always thought I was the only one annoyed that you can’t turn your screen off! You can adjust the brightness, and I usually turn the brightness on mine all the way down if/when I’m not watching something. I was so excited to fly them the first time I booked a flight – and then spent more than half of the flight “searching for satellite” and kept having the Simpson interrupted. I like to use my flying to catch up on reading, anyway!

    I love the picture, great work! It always cracks me up to be on a Jetblue flight and you know everyone is watching the same Simpsons/Friends/Seinfeld rerun because the whole plane chuckles at the same time when something funny happens! πŸ™‚

  2. sarah,
    for sure, i love watching the simpsons..in fact, i met Matt at a conference some time ago and we partied it out at the beach for a bit.
    As for reading, i was going to suggest for them to use the Screen as a reading light cause those things get megas bright…a channel that is just plain white.
    I’m going to take more pictures…I took the above picture half way down the aisle…from the very back, it’s very impressive..
    I sent a note to Jetblue and they said they would consider making the default OFF and make the ON a flick of a button…pretty simpel in my mind.perhaps even having a channel that is OFF would be more user friendly than pressing BRIGHTNESS 10 times downwards. Lots of ideas for the airline experience!!

  3. FYI–the Korean Air flight I took recently to Hong Kong had these Audio/Video On-Demand screen systems on every seat…and they were ON by default. Even worse off, as compared to Jet Blue—-on Jet Blue, you can adjust your screen brightness until it’s turned off. On Korean Air, you can only adjust the screen brightness til it’s dim but not off. You literally have to use the remote control and push “mode” from “Interactive” (using the screen) to Audio in order to turn the screen off—and even then, the “system” is still turned on for the user to listen to programs. So their isn’t a way to turn the system off at all.

    That said, Korean Air’s On-Demand entertainment system kicks Jet Blue’s butt–it didn’t have live tv (but then, we were flying over remote Alaska and Russia so I don’t think it mattered to have local live TV)—it was loaded up with over 20 current movies to watch plus had a bunch of shorts and documentaries, games and music. Check it out next time you fly to Asia.

  4. I think once JetBlue goes international, they can afford to give us controllable, on-demand movies for free with games, etc like the international flights. otherwise, for $50 flying here and there, it beats the international flights at around 500+…Jetblue flies to Cancun now though, so an international future may just happen…i wonder if the Cancun flights are any different.

  5. The Cancun flights from Boston cost $260 roundtrip!!!(Sweet)…all the other airlines are like $375+.
    I bet if they took this screen OFF idea of mine, they could make tickets much lower! Imagine, a GREEN JetBlue!

    Having them go to canada would rock even though Canada is driving distance to me. Hoepfully they have plans to.

  6. Am I missing something here? A jet aircraft’s internal power doesn’t connect to any external electrical grid. It’s current is produced by an onboard alternators or generators, in turn powered by the engines. Those turbines are spinning whether you watch tv or not (at least you better hope so)! This reminds me of a fellow who believed his car would use more gas if he turned up the temperature on the heater.

  7. captain,

    heya, you probably are right about the turbines turning no matter what, but, I’ll assume the less energy used, the less no matter. The tv’s on Red Eye flights are useless, hence generating much more heat, hence, needing more energy to cool the fuselage. My point about the energy is that the enegy doesnt need to be used, even if it pletiful.

    As for the car…I’m not sure what it does when you turn up the heat, but I have heard it is true that you use more gas when you turn on your ac….i’d have to look this up, but the engineer who told me about this several years ago convinced me quite easily … otherwise, the less enegy in any case, the better….especially if it is energy being used for no reason.

  8. It came to my attention that there was recent fire on a jet caused by faully wiring in the passenger compartment… The monitors are powered by miles of extra wiring, and any fault in that wiring increases the possibility of starting a fire. I’m no flight safety expert but I reckon with every monitor drawing power would increase the risk of a fire by significant factor. Burning planse dropping out of the sky aren’t the most environmentally friendly things I know about.

  9. I’m no genius, but it was recently pointed out to me that planes flying at high altitudes require the cabin air to be COOLED, not heated, even though it’s colder up there. Think about it …. compressing the air in a container (cabin pressure) causes the air in the container (i.e., the cabin) to heat up and thereby requires air conditioning to be running at those altitudes. In other words, all those TV monitors turned ON clearly ARE costing money and extra energy to be wastefully spent.

    BTW, turbines turn by way of fuel being burned. At best, if airplanes ever used hybrid auto technology found in braking systems, only THEN could you argue that the turning turbines would GENERATE power — and then only when the plane shut OFF the engines and allowed the forward motion to turn the turbines, not the fuel-injected engines. I doubt many of us will live to ever see such technology used in commercial airplanes.

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