United Airlines cites onboard video chats as possible terrorism

I understand heightened security measures in airports and on air planes, but at some point the rules and regulations by some airlines deserve a facepalm. Take, for instance, John Battelle, who flew on a United Airlines flight enabled with Wi-Fi recently. Since it was late at night, he wanted to video chat with his children simply to say good night. When attempting to initiate a video chat with his family, a flight attendant informed him of a flight policy: video chat communication could be used by terrorists to coordinate an attack.

Already, several airlines have banned methods of video communication such as Skype, but most notably, Apple iChat remains unblocked. The interesting part of this story is the fact that an FAA online fact sheet says video chat is frowned upon simply because it can be annoying to other passengers, not because of possible terrorist communication.

Perhaps airlines are banning video communication to keep Wi-Fi costs low and not have a lot of bandwidth. Or if video chat is actually prohibited on grounds of terrorist communications, shouldn’t Instant Messaging and email also be blocked?

Via [BoingBoing]