In-flight Wi-Fi is one of the best aspects of modern air travel — even though it’s far slower than what you’d get from a 4G LTE smartphone or a  typical home broadband connection. But that could all change in a few years.

Yesterday the Federal Communications Commission approved a plan to open up wireless spectrum to speed up in-flight Wi-Fi, the New York Times reports. While it’s only the first of many steps that need to be taken, it shows that the FCC is aware of the growing importance of getting online during flights. (At this point, it’s practically a requirement for me during any cross-country flight.)

Current in-flight Wi-Fi technology gets speeds of around 3 megabits per second per plane, which is about ten-times slower than your typical home broadband connection (and slower than speeds than you see on LTE 4G). That’d be a decent speed for a single person’s Internet connection, but right now it’s shared across everyone who signs up for in-flight Internet. That’s one of the reasons Gogo ended up raising its prices — by limiting Internet service to people willing to pay a higher price, it can actually improve the experience of its service.

By using the new wireless spectrum, a newer format of in-flight technology could see speeds of up to 300 gigabits per second, or 30 times faster than your typical home Internet connection. The new technology would be able to take advantage of a wider array of wireless spectrum, as well as maintain better contact with the plane, FCC officials said. The agency plans to let ISPs purchase a license to share spectrum with satellite communications companies, which will be used to implement a cell-tower based system for in-flight Wi-Fi.

The big problem? It’ll likely be years until we see the faster in-flight Internet technology implemented. But once it does arrive, anyone on a plane will be able to stream hi-def movies, play online games, and access large files over cloud storage. And hopefully, the new technology will also drive down the price of in-flight Internet service. (Right now GoGo charges around $25 for the privilege to use its service for the entire day.)

Airplane photo via Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

The Federal Communications Commission released a new set of rules today aimed at making it easier for airline carriers to offer their passengers in-flight Internet access — and I don’t think I’m alone when saying it’s about freakin’ time.

Of course, the FCC isn’t solely to blame for all the rigid and ridiculous restrictions placed on Internet access during a flight. The agency jointly regulates in-air communications along with the much more stodgy Federal Aviation Administration, which forces passengers to turn off all electronics before and slightly after a plane takes off.

“These new rules will help airlines and broadband providers offer high-speed Internet to passengers,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski told Bloomberg in a statement. Genachowski said he’s been pushing the FAA to approve a revised set of rules regarding electronic usage during flights. For instance, one dire exception the FAA has yet to even acknowledge is being able to use devices like iPads and iPhones during take off if the passenger is using the “Airplane Mode” setting that blocks all Internet connectivity.

Previously, Airlines needed approval by the FCC to offer an in-flight Wi-Fi service, which was a long and slow process that permitted some airlines to offer stellar web services while others were woefully left out. Under the new rules, the FCC will offer airlines an opportunity to meet a set of standards that make sure the Internet service won’t interfere with the plane’s controls or communications while it’s in the air. These standards permit the passenger/consumer Internet access to work with an aircraft’s other communications systems to ensure problems don’t exist.

According to the FCC, the new access rules should lead to faster adoption and licensing of Internet services across all airlines and offer a path toward FAA approval of updated electronic usage regulation.

While I’m glad to hear that I’ll soon have more opportunities to pay $49.95 for unlimited blazing-fast Wi-Fi service on my 75-minute flight to the next airport, I won’t be fully satisfied until flight attendants stop acting like anti-gadget police during take off. Luckily, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) shares my frustration, and earlier this month threatened to introduce new legislation for in-flight electronic use if the FAA doesn’t act soon.

Airplane photo via Chalabala/Shutterstock

While most of the attention for NASA involves the Mars Curiosity mission, the organization has its fingers in tons of other projects, such as funding supersonic jet concepts like the one shown above.

NASA awarded $100,000 to University of Miami’s Gecheng Zha for his “supersonic bi-directional flying wing” or SBiDir-FW concept last week. Most planes need a large wingspan to become airborne, which then hinders its ability to reach subsonic speeds. Zha’s concept plane, however, addresses this issue by taking off as a wide, wing-shaped vehicle, and then rotating itself 90 degrees without requiring a powered system. That means the plane is actually designed to fly sideways, which seems like something straight out of a sci-fi movie.

The plane concept plane is also designed to be quiet and produce virtually zero sonic boom.

If the SBiDir-FW’s early development goes well, it could receive another $500,000 in funding.

Via Engadget

You don’t often hear about planes crashing in mid-air. The systems they have in place have done a fairly good job at keeping passengers safe. But safety and security are two different things, and while the systems may work, one researcher has found they are scarily easy to hack.

“This is like shooting fish in a barrel. If you’re not scared about this, you should be,” said researcher Nick Foster at the Def Con conference in Las Vegas. “Without encryption without any bottom security and protocol, it’s just not hard.”

The systems that keep planes from running into each other are called Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast and there are two types ADS-B In (the transmissions sending information to the planes) and ADS-B out (the transmissions sending information to the tower). Both of these transmission types are unencrypted and unauthenticated — meaning  the transmissions between the plane and tower are not protected and there’s no way to prove it actually came from the plane or the tower. Anyone can listen to these transmissions and monitor where planes are going and how fast.

Renderman, or Brad Haines, discovered this blatant vulnerability after checking out Planefinder AR, an app that lets you hold your phone to the sky and see where the flights overhead are going. He wondered where the app got its data, and found a number of websites that aggregated data from users. These users set up ground stations, collect data from flights going over, and feed the data into the site’s database.

So, what can people do with that information? Hack it, of course.

If you have access to the transmissions being sent to the tower, who is to say you can’t fuzz the information, add a bit of your own data to the real data. For example, you could tell air traffic control that there was a plane headed straight for the tower, though no plane existed. You could also potentially jam the system by adding fifty more planes to the control tower’s systems, which could send the operators scrambling or overload the system. You could also duplicate a real flight headed through the area. This is dangerous if the tower operators decide to ignore the right flight data, thinking it was a glitch in the system.

Pilots in flight can be messed with as well. A hacker could alert pilots to a fake plane headed straight for it. They could also spoof the GPS, which pilots depend on to know where they are in the skies. We saw GPS spoofing recently when Iran landed a U.S. drone flying in the vicinity. The country’s engineers were allegedly able to hack into the drone’s systems, make it think it was in its landing location and landed the drone within its borders.

Haines stressed, “for the love of Spongebob do not try anything you’re about to see.” He wanted to make this public so that the airline industry can patch up its leaky ship — encrypt and protect this information.

Image via Dean Takahashi/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Australian airline Qantas will provide economy and business passengers on all 767 flights with iPads, a move that pushes the state of in-flight entertainment forward.

Not only will iPads make flying Qantas more attractive to economy and business customers, the addition will help Qantas keep up with rival Virgin Australia, which has lots of in-flight entertainment options. The iPads will be equipped with a program called QStreaming, which can provide 200 hours of television and audio entertainment.

Because Qantas has 23 Boeing 767 airplanes, the company will likely purchase more than 5,000 iPads to make sure every passenger gets one. The iPads will be placed in each seat pocket, and the service will be free.

iPads will begin showing up on Qantas airplanes in the fourth quarter of 2012 and will be found mostly on Australia’s east coast and Perth routes.

Photo credit: Global X/Flickr

Google’s top three executives have offered to pay $33 million through a jointly owned company to save Hangar One, a historic building used to house large airships at Moffett Field in Mountain View, Calif.

Google’s Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt made the proposal back in September via H211, a jointly owned company that manages their fleet of private jets. Ken Ambrose, director of operations at H211, says that NASA — which owns Moffett Field — is considering the offer, reports the San Jose Mercury News.

The report also brings to light another interesting tidbit: Google’s execs own eight private jets. As part of H211′s offer, the company is also asking for use of up to two-thirds of Hangar One’s floor space for the private jets.

It seems that everyone wins if H211′s offer is approved. NASA gets to save a historic landmark, and Google’s execs get a home base for their private jets right near Google’s Mountain View headquarters.

Speaking at a meeting on Thursday of the Hangar One Subcommittee of the Moffett Field Restoration Advisory Board, Ambrose expressed his frustration about NASA’s delayed response. “A decision should have been made by now,” he said, as the Mercury News reports. “It’s quarter to midnight as far as I can see.”

Ambrose says that to get the restoration up and running by the summer, H211 needs immediate approval to start gathering consultants, permits, and other necessities. There’s a heightened sense of urgency now, since NASA has begun removing Hangar One’s PCB-filled exterior paneling, leaving the interior of the building exposed to the elements.

H211 isn’t trying to buy out Hangar One from NASA. As part of H211′s deal, NASA will still retain ownership of the building and will be able to lease out space to others.

Photo by Jennifer Morrow/Flickr

As if we needed another reason to fear malware, authorities investigating the 2008 crash of Spanair flight 5022 have discovered that the plane’s computer system — which is used to keep track of technical problems — was infected with malware, according to a report by the Spanish newspaper El Pais.

The crash took place during takeoff from Madrid-Barajas International Airport, and left 154 dead, with 18 survivors. An early investigation by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board revealed that the plane had taken off with its slats and flaps retracted, and that there was no audible alarm thanks to a power failure with the takeoff warning system, TechNewsDaily reports. The system also failed to report two other events.

That leaves a total of three separate technical problems that, if properly detected, could have prevented the flight from taking off, according to an internal Spanair report (in Spanish, of course). The airline figures that the malware infection was to be blame.

The malware was apparently a type of Trojan horse — software that sneaks onto a computer and allows hackers to gain access to a computer system. It could have gotten onto the computer in a variety of ways — including via an infected USB stick, an infected file downloaded to the computer, or by merely visiting a malicious website with an insecure browser like Internet Explorer 6.

Not everyone is convinced that the El Pais report is accurate, however. On security guru Bruce Schneier’s blog post, many commenters are pointing out that the Pais report is full of errors.

While the accuracy of the report is still up in the air, it certainly brings to light the topic of computer security around integrated systems. Schneier himself has long believed that the Blaster worm may have been a major factor in the 2003 blackout that affected the Northeast U.S. and Canada. And as someone who was knee-deep in IT support at the time, and saw how Blaster could take down a major organization’s network in minutes, I’m inclined to agree with him.

Photo credit: soypocholapantera on Flickr