I just saw a TV news piece (UPD: and New York Times Travel wrote about it too) saying that new security measures on US flights require airlines to turn off maps on in-flight entertainment systems so terrorists would not know the airplane location.

This sounds ridiculous because, firstly, those maps are scarcely informative. Secondly, if a serious person is planning to blow an airplane in the sky over any particular point of interest, he probably knows the route by minutes, so he does not really need a map or any kind of location technology.

Now, think about the in-flight Internet. This is a service on the rise – American Airlines was going to launch it, and Virgin too – see http://blog.arrivedok.mobi/2008/06/25/internet-on-the-plane)? Will it be banned too for security reasons? Because if a passenger have an Internet connection and/or a GPS device he can easily detect the plane location.

I can easily imagine that much hyped (http://blog.arrivedok.mobi/2009/01/28/in-flight-calls-a-reality) in-flight mobile services like voice calls, mobile Internet, WAP, SMS can be banned too for similar reasons.

I can only hope that those travel restrictions will not affect our ArrivedOK Flight Arrival Tracker when it will be available in the US. Simply because its purpose is to track your mobile phone when you turn it on after landing and trigger the delivery of arrival alerts to your designated recipients. But who knows.

It’s another time when terrorists tried to blow JW Marriott in Jakarta. Took that picture couple of years ago while staying at that place. There always was a lot of guards around the hotel, however that guy with M-16 didn’t help this time. Our condolences to the victims’ families.