Wanted: In flight entertainers

My wife and I recently traveled on several airlines, some Canadian and some from the US. The one trend that we noticed is that the usual seat back entertainment screen was gone, and it has been replaced by in-flight WiFi and an application that runs on a smartphone or tablet to view a movie of your choice. This appeared to be the norm on all airlines except Air Canada, who had invested heavily in seat back systems in their larger aircraft, and appeared not be be about to remove them anytime soon, but it was starting to appear on smaller equipment.

Such a system is a good deal for the airline, as it reduces their capital investment from having to install a device in each and every seat, and not having to put up with grumpy passengers who claim it is broken when the can't figure out how to use it; and even move them if it did not. Instead the new world is just to install the infrastructure, have the consumers supply the terminals on their own, and feed them tons of unwanted commercials in between.

For some airlines this appears to have been a myopic strategy that has recently backfired. In the ever-progressing moves by the bad guys to find yet another way to endanger the traveling public, tablets and PC's were their next logical choice, as they have already explored water bottles, toothpaste and flammable underwear. Now the era has arrived where you cannot take a device larger than a smartphone on a plane, it needs to be checked, but have we now forgotten about the recent Samsung fiasco with lithium batteries going up in smoke? Not to even go near the thermal runaway issues.

Some pundits claim there is no difference between carrying one of these devices in the passenger cabin or checking it; but there I beg to differ. More and more airlines are now using container systems for baggage, as they don't have to heave each and every suitcase any more, instead they roll nicely fitting fireproof boxes up into the plane and into the hold in a matter of minutes, where the contents can be submitted to -40 degree temperatures and very low air pressures for an addition measure of safety.

The bottom line here is that moving these devices to the hold is a good safety measure overall, but now what do we do for in flight entertainment? I suppose that we can watch the movie on a smart phone (until those get relegated as well), or maybe it is time to take a lesson from the past. In the olden days of rail travel there were entertainers who moved along the train and kept all amused, for a moderate tip of a few coins. Will be see their resurgence in airplanes? Trains did not have any restrictions like takeoff and landings, unless you count don't use the facilities when the train is in the station, and in the old days they were tipped in cash; but you can't do that anymore for safety reasons, so take your credit card along - you will need it due to inflation, anyway.

Happy travels: and when all else fails, take a book along.