I don’t think it’s about porn - I think it’s about more mainstream offerings that still might have content I wouldn’t watch if an 8 year old was sitting next to me or behind me. The flights I’ve been for the last few years have Direct TV or something similar. I’m pretty sure the airline can’t blur an HBO movie on Direct TV - not to mention there’s no way they could blur what I’m watching on my tablet using my own streaming subscription.
Any vids you can watch are stored on board and are provided pre-cleaned-up by the entertainment system vendor. And there is no private vid streaming; the airplane’s bandwidth couldn’t support that. Yet.
The real issue is that a surprising number of people do have porn (or nearly-porn) vids pre-downloaded onto their device and watch those inflight. With little thought to the others around them. Until somebody complains.
Agree to disagree. There are ways to get more room if you’re willing to pay for it. I understand not everyone can afford that but taking advantage of a few inches of recline doesn’t make you an asshole.
I’ve streamed on my own tablet using my own subscription at least on Jet Blue - can’t swear about other airlines. From Jet Blue
Only JetBlue offers free, high-speed wi-fi at every seat, on every plane. Browse, buy, like, listen, surf, stream and so much more—from takeoff to touchdown.
And American
Upgraded, high-speed Wi-Fi is available to buy on select domestic flights. Browse the internet, check emails and stream video services like Netflix, Hulu and HBO faster than ever before.
I’m not sure how the airline can store everything on board , prescreened when they are offering 10 or 30 or 100 channels of Direct TV live. Sure, if the airline is only offering selected TV and movies they can store and pre-screen those but the limit in screening live TV is going to be limiting the channels.
The seat is designed to lean back. That is what you are supposed to do with it. That is what you paid for, too.
And if it causes a problem for the person behind you, well…guess what? He can lean his seat back, too!!! Amazing !!!
The space between his nose and the TV screen on your seat’s backside is the same, whether you both remain upright, or you both lean the seat back.
Everything remains parallel…Remember high school lessons in Euclidean geometry? . 
Listen, buddy: there ain’t no “maybe” here.
Every trip I take involves a 13 hour flight, with the lights in the cabin turned off for 10 hours. I’m going to sleep; with a pillow around my neck, foam plugs in my ears, a black eye mask over my eyes, and yes…I’m leaning the seat back. Deal with it.
The way old fashioned seats were designed, leaning back was pure gain for the leaner and pure loss for the person behind. Who had no real choice but to pass it on rearward. Unsurprisingly, in that environment most people, who are mostly selfish, reclined fully and immediately.
The way current production seats work, as the seat back leans rearward the seat pan slides forward. So you reclining costs you some knee room. The seat back is pivoting about a point at about the small of your back, not your butt crack. The end result is the person behind you doesn’t get the seat top stuffed in their face nearly as much as they used to.
The net effect is that if you recline you’re taking less chest space from the person behind versus before, and also costing yourself some knee room. This tradeoff produces more thoughtful behavior from people. Not because they’re more caring, but just that by imposing a direct inescapable obvious cost on their selfishness, they’ll (on average) do less of it. So we all win.
IMO insisting that nobody recline is stupid.
It’s nice to consider who’s behind you and if you’re small and they’re big, maybe gift them some of your excess room by reclining less. That’s my usual play, as I’m small enough that coach seating on real airlines is plenty good fore-and-aft.
There’s no good answer for the people who fly the budget-est of budget carriers; they knowingly shit-canned any chance for their own comfort when they bought the ticket.
I didn’t know this, and have never noticed it. How common is it in most fleets?
Certainly was the way the recline worked on my last few flights.
Most US airlines for the last 20 years maybe. I expect there are exceptions, but I haven’t ridden on them.
Major airlines replace all their cabin interiors on about 15-20 year cycles. Heck, much of the current US mainline fleet was built factory-fresh in the last 15 years.
@LSLGuy I’m fresh from the “recycling cans” thread, and now I’m picturing this gigantic return machine, and some poor bastard methodically feeding in old jetliners, one by one…
Here you go - the real thing recycling:
Yes, a couple of airlines offer live satellite TV – JetBlue has had it I believe as long as they’ve existed, and Continental added a similar system in the late aughts, which is still present on at least some of the planes in United’s fleet. But I don’t believe any of them offer premium channels like HBO that would show anything with uncensored nudity or anything like that. I think it’s pretty much limited to the standard basic cable channels.
The problem is that airlines typically pre-board a number of demographic groups: disabled folks, veterans, families with small children, and so on. These folks will be scattered throughout the aircraft and will not be happy if they can’t access the overhead bins near their own seats whenever they want to.
As for what goes where…in addition to a checked bag, I typically travel with a carry-on backpack. If I have a jacket/sweater with me when I board the plane, that’s going in the overhead bin and the backpack is going under the seat in front of me. I want easy access to it during the flight, and since people put the bottoms of their shoes under there, I’d rather put my backpack there than my jacket/sweater. Gross maybe, but less gross.
I once preloaded an iPad with several episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. When I finally had an opportunity to watch an episode in mid-flight, I suddenly remembered that Terry Gilliam’s animations are generously peppered with nudity, and decided that I probably ought not watch them in public places.
Hmm. A system that could automatically lock and unlock the bins surely could do so for individual bins. The pre-boarding folks could know that they would have their bins be inaccessible for the duration of regular boarding, or else their bins could stay unlocked for the whole time. It seems like this would be a solvable problem.
Any electromechanical solution is going to add a lot of cost and weight; it’s just never going to happen. Frequently reminding passengers not to be total assholes is pretty much the only effort that’s likely to ever be put into solving this problem.
I am a mechanical engineer, but I would think that each individual lock would be maybe a couple of ounces more than the current latch mechanism, and would cost less than 100 bucks. Given the cost of a plane, I would think both the cost and weight would not be tremendous. But maybe I’m wrong.
Oh for fuck’s sake. I am NOT a mechanical engineer. Sorry.
Anyway, this is the sort of product I’m thinking about:
https://www.amazon.com/HFeng-Electric-Magnetic-Electromagnetic-Cabinet/dp/B07DPTM34L/
It’s a $17, 1-pound lock. It’s not remotely-controlled, but that’s a trivial change; and this is a stock solution, not one bespoke to an airplane bin door.
I figured it was probably one or the other
Except everything that gets installed on an airplane has to be certified by the FAA. Just going through that certification process is going to add a lot to the cost.
This. It’s gotta be unlikely to start a fire when it malfunctions. It can’t interfere with avionics. There’s the design and installation costs, but there’s also the inspection/maintenance costs. there’s also the weight penalty, which involves not just the locks, but the wiring that links them all to a control panel somewhere; it’ll cost you more fuel to fly the plane with all that hardware aboard, and it’ll lower how much revenue-generating cargo/meat your can carry. It has to be designed to fail in an unlocked state, because if it ever breaks in a way that locks a bin - especially when it’s got luggage trapped inside - that’s gonna make paying customers very unhappy. You can weigh those downsides against the status quo, i.e. occasional unhappiness of front-of-the-cabin customers who find that their bin space has been commandeered by a selfish putz seated in the rear of the cabin. So far, the airlines have decided that the latter is the less unpalatable option.