New airplane seat design to make it easier to sleep in economy

Re:New airplane seat design to make it easier to sleep in ec... by blackguardx on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @01:26AM (#21750173)

I'm pretty sure many airlines already have cameras looking at your face.

The last few international United Airlines flights I was on had IR LEDs just below the seat entertainment screen shining in my face the whole flight. I worked for an 3D camera company at the time and was pretty tuned in to IR (~850 nm) LED's dim red glow. There is no reason for them being there unless there are cameras looking at your face.

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Re:New airplane seat design to make it easier to sleep in ec... by bhaile on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @01:42AM (#21750256)

"As with many other airlines, some of our premium seats have in-flight entertainment systems that came with cameras installed by the manufacturer," a United Airlines spokesperson said. "None of these cameras were ever activated and we had no plans to use them in the future, however, we took the additional step to cover the cameras."

https://www.zdnet.com/article/united-airlines-covers-up-info...

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Re:New airplane seat design to make it easier to sleep in ec... by bigiain on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @02:26AM (#21750416)

Next minute: DHS adds PostIt notes to the list of banned items in aircraft cabins...

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Re:New airplane seat design to make it easier to sleep in ec... by pauldino on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @04:18AM (#21750935)

I flew a United 787-9 recently and noticed an IR LED too, but I assumed it was a proximity sensor (when you bring your hands close to the bottom of the screen the home button, headphone jack, and USB charging port light up).

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Re:New airplane seat design to make it easier to sleep in ec... by fastball on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @07:00AM (#21751665)

It's an IR proximity sensor, at least on the Panasonic systems.

Some of the Thales systems do have webcams.

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Re:New airplane seat design to make it easier to sleep in ec... by 3JPLW on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @01:30AM (#21750194)

But why?

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Re:New airplane seat design to make it easier to sleep in ec... by blackguardx on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @01:34AM (#21750211)

They probably put it in to do gaze tracking in the hopes of selling that data back to movie studios/advertisers. I'm not sure if they currently sell this data, but I'm sure we will find out when/if some disclaimer flashes on the screen in the beginning of the flight.

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Re:New airplane seat design to make it easier to sleep in ec... by tracer4201 on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @09:53AM (#21752980)

Hopefully it doesn’t catch on too much. I’d boycott any airline that I knew was doing that.

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Re:New airplane seat design to make it easier to sleep in ec... by pbhjpbhj on Tuesday December 10, 2019 @04:17AM (#21750930)

Would security services pay for good 3D scans of all people taking airline flights. Seems a possibility to me.

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