{"id":21,"date":"2006-09-01T12:54:25","date_gmt":"2006-09-01T02:54:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/decoded.outer-rim.org\/?p=21"},"modified":"2006-09-01T22:56:57","modified_gmt":"2006-09-01T12:56:57","slug":"watching-live-tv-in-the-sky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/decoded.outer-rim.org\/?p=21","title":{"rendered":"Watching live TV in the sky…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Virgin<\/p>\n

Late last week, I spent a couple of full days working in the sky… Flying between Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, and Perth in a Virgin Blue Boeing 737-700\u00a0doing\u00a0private test flights. I was testing out the\u00a0new “Lve 2 Air” service, which puts 24 channels of live FOXTEL (pay TV) on seat-backs on Virgin Blue planes, using\u00a0a\u00a0special satellite tracking antenna\u00a0attached to\u00a0the top of the plane. It works great, a few issues, but they should be\u00a0sorted out quickly, it’s a very enjoyable way to pass the time, it’s a $6 credit card swipe.<\/p>\n

It was a fun\u00a0couple of days work,\u00a0watching live TV in the sky, with friendly flight crew laying on the food\/drink, and a nice stop-over hotel\/dinner\/breakfast in Melbourne. On the flights\u00a0we\u00a0got an entire row of seats across the aircraft to ourselves (you never see that these days!), and we were asked\u00a0to monitor channels for any issues.\u00a0I\u00a0also got to spend 30 minutes in the cockpit chatting to one of the pilots\u00a0during our track across to Perth, learning what all the control panel’s buttons, switches, and screens are used for,\u00a0not something\u00a0you have the chance to do at all these days, a great experience. If I had been quicker off the mark I might have been able to secure the jump-seat for a take off or landing.\u00a0The aborted landings in Brisbane and Adelaide were quite exciting, coming in to land, then rapidly ascending into the sky seconds before touch down.\u00a0I got to spend\u00a0a whole 8 minutes in Perth at the airport terminal, while the plane refueled, so I didn’t really get to ‘visit’ anywhere, apart from a night in Melbourne at an airport hotel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Late last week, I spent a couple of full days working in the sky… Flying between Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, and Perth in a Virgin Blue Boeing 737-700\u00a0doing\u00a0private test flights. I was testing out the\u00a0new “Lve 2 Air” service, which puts 24 channels of live FOXTEL (pay TV) on seat-backs on Virgin Blue planes, using\u00a0a\u00a0special […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/decoded.outer-rim.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/decoded.outer-rim.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/decoded.outer-rim.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/decoded.outer-rim.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/decoded.outer-rim.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/decoded.outer-rim.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/decoded.outer-rim.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/decoded.outer-rim.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/decoded.outer-rim.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}