It is for video calls. Depending on your class, you can video call the flight attendants

Whay's the point of video calling someone in the same room a few meters away?

On an A380, they could be on a different floor and 200 meters away...

You mean 200 feet?

Yeah, I got a little carried away there...

When my house was built, I considered adding a wired intercom system. I could never think of a reason why it would be better than just yelling.

So you can communicate without waking up your sleeping infant, turns out. Though phones work for this too.

Stop worrying about waking up the kids with your noise, and they'll soon learn it's normal (even comforting) and sleep right through it.

That probably works great for your children, and I'm very happy for you, but not shouting works a treat for me. If a child slept through shouting that was loud enough in my house to be heard (we have 3 foot thick stone walls) I would be worried about their hearing.

Also, I mean this in the most polite way possible, but unsolicited parenting advice is often not received as well as one might hope.

If you're yelling enough for your children to no longer wake up from it, your neighbours will typically call a social worker.

I doubt they'd call the social workers over yelling "Mr. Watson come here - I want to see you."

Many DECT phones have this functionality without being wired. Also there probably is a way to use SIP locally as an intercom between smartphones.

Unlike an intercom they're portable.

The main thing missing is voice or sound activated pick-up and hang-up, sometimes automatic loudspeaker mode.

I rejected wireless intercoms at the time because every wireless thing I bought had horrible sound quality, like the worst walkie-talkie. Even with simple analog electronics, wired had good sound quality.

I did install some speaker wires, but the times when I wanted to play music in one room and hear it in another are just about never.

Guess I'm just not finding any point to home automation. Even if I had installed a home automation system, the intervening years would have turned it into expensive obsolete junk anyway. I've heard of people, when they try to sell their homes, having to rip it all out and put in conventional wiring.

What did pay off was running Cat5 and RG6 cables in a star configuration. Wifi has improved greatly, but it's nothing like a wired connection for smooth, problem free operation.

>I did install some speaker wires, but the times when I wanted to play music in one room and hear it in another are just about never.

I have speakers around my house, including on my deck, wired to a stereo receiver for music and I do use it. But Sonos didn't exist when I had the various renovations done when the wiring was added. If I were doing it today, I'd almost certainly just go with some sort of wireless system.

It's less disruptive if the passenger is in the window seat.

How so? There is already a button to get the flight attendant to come over without having to move yourself, and you are going to talk aloud all the same. In fact with video calling you may disrupt a larger number of people since the flight attendant is also going to talk aloud in a different part of the cabin, creating two disjointed pockets of noise.

Using a call button, the flight attendant has to come over twice - once to find out what you want, and then again to bring you the thing you asked for. Any form of remote communication (video chat, text message, whatever) reduces that to a single interaction.

Fewer trips down the aisle, less time spent leaning over other passengers, etc.

If I were the PM on this project I probably would've used a standard menu of services (get a blanket, refill water bottle) in an app on the IFE display instead, but the principle is sound.

A button to get peanuts ...

> A button to get peanuts ...

Or a blanket, or a gin tonic, or a cup of noodles between meal services on a 16-hour flight from Hong Kong to New York...

Ordering food from your IFE is pretty common, at least in business class on the asian airlines. I think I've done it on CX and JL, at least.

Eventually AI will be watching your stress level mannerisms and micro-expressions to determine if youre a risk to the flight.

In the beginning, yes.

But after a short while the AI would carefully watch you while playing non-skippable ads to gauge how to maximize revenue per customer.

Unless you're a medieval king with 200 servants it's difficult to imagine yes. Maybe when someone is disabled? But then again sound would be enough.

? What was this supposed to be to?