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Southwest Airlines will become the first U.S. carrier to restrict the use of power banks inflight for portable charging. Southwest also significantly lags American, Delta and United in offering passengers power at their seat.
Having to share power in coach has become more of a problem as passengers increasingly rely on their devices – either for inflight entertainment (because American Airlines flights lack screens) or to connect to the world (Delta’s free wifi).
But how about this passenger in first class who seems to need more than one outlet for themselves – and deprives the passenger behind them?
Southwest offers more legroom in coach than competitors, but there’s no seat back entertainment and no seat power. The lack of power for your devices is a big deal on connecting itineraries and longer flights, such as Southwest’s service to Hawaii. That’s going to start changing.
Southwest has also selected ViaSat to provide internet for its new delivery aircraft In the meantime they’ve swapped out the hardware from their existing internet provider on 40 of their Boeing 737s to improve internet speeds, and they’ve been testing free wifi on those aircraft. Half of Southwest’s fleet is expected to have the new hardware for faster internet by the end of the year.
I travel with UK power adapters. The three-pronged grip will stay in the outlet, while U.S. plugs will fall out of an outlet that’s not properly maintained just enough to lose charging capability. But there’s another solution to the problem that doesn’t even require packing something extra.
Passengers will make ingenious use of the limited amenities offered to them on a plane, whether it’s plugging a sewing machine into seat power to make curtains or drying underwear using the air vent above a seat.
But what if you don’t have enough outlets for your electronics?
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.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
