Q: Do these airplane sockets work? A: I'm not an engineer, okay?

The following is a verbatim conversation that occurred on flight EI 146 from San Francisco to Dublin at 4.55pm (PST), just as we were passing over Salt Lake City. Backdrop: I had discovered, to my delight, that the plane had power sockets on each seat. But when I plugged my laptop in, there was no current. Puzzled, I stopped a stewardess...

Me: "Hi. Can I ask: do these power points work?"
Stewardess: "With a laptop? Oh, no. You're not supposed to recharge laptops on them. I know that. No, they're not meant to recharge a laptop."
Me: "Do they work with anything?"
Her: "Well, I know that they're not supposed to be used for recharging a laptop. So..."
[At this point she wagged her finger at me. Playfully, but very much in the manner of: you shouldn't be doing that, now.]
Me: "But what are they used for, then?"
Her: "I don't know. I'm not an engineer. Okay? Is that okay?
Me: "Thank you."
Her: "You're welcome."

What a silly man I am. Sure why would a power socket on an overnight, 11-hour flight be meant to accommodate the use of a laptop?
God, I'm such a fool sometimes.

Update (5.27pm, PST). I have just asked a second crew member, a male steward, the same question. Here is the verbatim exchange.

Me: Excuse me, but do the power sockets on each seat work?"
Him: "Not all of them."
Me: "Oh. How do you mean?"
Him: "Some of them work. The ones with the red lights."
Me: "The red lights?"
Him: "Yes... [he looked into the distance at far off seats] Let me see if I can find any."

I am cursing myself. Why didn't I book one of the seats with the red lights? I have only myself to blame...

Update 2 (5.39pm PST). Okay, so maybe I'm not going to get a powered laptop. Hey, look on the bright side, though -- we've got personal screens on each seat! There's a choice of Marley & Me, The Day The Earth Stood Still and Slumdog Millionaire. Looking forward to this.

Update 3 (5.40pm PST). An announcement over the intercom says that there are "a few difficulties being experienced" on the entertainment system. It's not bloody working. But it's okay: the team are going to reboot the system. Any minute now, we'll be in movie heaven...

Update 4 (5.46pm PST). The reboot was not successful, according to the Aer Lingus man behind the intercom. Another reboot is to be attempted. Beside me, a woman with a restless five-year old looks like she's going to blow a fuse. But Aer Lingus folks know what they're doing. So it's all gonna be okay.

Update 5 (5.55pm PST). Okay, that reboot hasn't worked, according to the intercom.  The woman with the five-year old beside me is getting red-faced. I've just offered her and her sullen daughter the use of my Nintendo DS, which has a tennis game, a brain training game and Sim City with it. She thanked me but declined and is now waving franticlly for a stewardess. I have still not found a red light to power my laptop.

Update 6 (6.15pm PST). The intercom: "ladies and gentlemen, as you will have noticed, we are continuing to experience difficulties with our inflight entertainment system. We apologise and are continuing to try to rectify it."

Update 7 (6.25pm PST). Woo-hoo! The entertainment system is working. I switch on a movie. I look around to the lady and the five-year old, but they’ve left for another seat.

Update 8 (6.40pm PST). Mr Red Light steward has come back with an update on the power sockets.
“None of them are working, not even in Premier Class. We’ve had big problems with the whole [Avod] system over the past few days.”
Me: “But do the power sockets usually work when the entertainment system works?”
Him: “Well… there’s nothing wrong with the plane. They should work, but they could have been switched off deliberately.”

Switched off deliberately, eh? I suppose it’s for our own good. We have enough computers in our life, don’t we? Best cut us off for a while.

Update 9 (6.51pm PST). Aw, heck. The entertainment system has crashed. All screens have gone blank. Now there’s some gobbledygook computer code running down our screen. A collective groan has just gone up around the cabin.

Update 10 (8.34am GMT). Well, those red-light power sockets never did materialise. However, the entertainment system stayed working for the rest of the flight, even if that period coincided the time when most of us felt we should get some sleep. The first stewardess, the one who affirmed she wasn’t an engineer, did come back to me with a clarification of sorts, saying that the sockets are, indeed, meant for use with laptops. But it proved to be a moot point.

Comments

[Cronan]

hilarious - in a glad it was you rather you than me and it's better to laugh rather than cry kind of way.

[Aaron]

Jesus Adrian, you're making me fucking stressed just reading about your flying experience... I used to spend half my working life on airplanes, and experienced much of the same sort of worries and niggles.

Still, with regularity comes little habits that get you through it. Aer Lingus to LA was tolerable, 'cept the times I didn't get the legroom seats (as others may not know, I'm 6ft5). That was a bitch.

One time (...at bandcamp...?) I got put *behind* the legroom seats, thankyouverymuch, and the bastards in front were wannabe posh golfer types - one of them reminded me of Ben Dunne (sorry Ben) in a purely physical and vocal sense, of course - and they decided to stick the seats fully back (I never stick mine back!)

Then, somewhere over Iceland, a kid in the next isle, who's feet were dangling over the edge, started screaming and kicking up a fuss. I thought to myself "You little bastard, you don't know how good you have it. Keep it up and you're going out the bloody door."

One time though I got both a legroom seat and an Apple engineer to sit beside, we chatted the whole way about nerdy crap. He was designing iPod interfaces for BMW's at the time.

So many stories, good and bad...

[John]

Glad is was only the entertainment system that crashed :)