This is making the rounds, it was sent to me by 3 people today. I can’t imagine it’s real, but it appears legitimate and I want it to be real.
An Etihad pilot writes up wifi service from their July 19 Abu Dhabi – Washington Dulles Boeing 787 flight for “poor connectivity in flight deck. Unable to view: Facebook.. Tinder.. Youporn/Redtube”
It’s good to know that pilots’ interests are aligned with passengers, agitating for better inflight wifi!
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Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
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Most of those sites are blocked by UAE ISPs anyway. If he attempted to access those from inside the UAE without a VPN, he could wind up in jail. I highly doubt any UAE resident would be stupid enough to actually write this up.
I have used FB on EK with no issues. I have also had slow WIFI
now don’t you think the pilot is well aware of the “do’s and don’ts of being in UAE ??
I order to use tinder, location service has to be available, therefore airplane mode has to be turned off. Pilots violated aviation laws?
Seems to me that a few people are missing the joke. The last item on the list is “Co. email” – the pilot just added the others to set up the punchline. The in-flight WiFi is useless for him to access his corporate email account – which one presumes he is expected to do – and, to make matters worse, he can’t use it to have fun either.
In his shoes, I probably would have written my complaint in almost the same way, and would have been equally disappointed by the response.
This photo is most likely part of the ongoing black ops PR campaign by the Airline Pilots Association and Airlines for America against Etihad and Emirates. They have hired numerous outside public relations firms with expertise in dirty tricks.
It will be interesting to see whether Gary Leff will disavow receiving payment from an outside source for publishing this post on a widely read travel website.
The handwriting looks different after the first line.
Hi Gary,
The above screenshot is genuine. I know this as I wrote it during a boring cruise over the Atlantic.
While meant as a joke (and no, we weren’t surfing those sites or any other sites inflight), how fast it went viral was utterly astonishing.
Within hours of sending it to a few contacts, it was coming back from all over the world, Pakistan, Canada, and Australia to name a few, and that I think is the lesson here.
If you put it out there, it’s out there forever.
I did however make one small error.
I should’ve checked the staff number… I thought I chose a random one but it just happened to belong to a friend, who got a bit of grief over it. A bottle of red wine sorted that. Lesson learned.
So, yes it is real. It’s not a PR stunt.
Additionally, yes you can use a VPN to access those sites, and no you won’t end up in jail.
However, they do monitor access to weapon or gun sites and they will call you in for a chat if you like hunting or target shooting in your home country and frequent those sites… a friend did get called in for exactly that.
Hope that clears up a few things.
Regards,
the author