American Airlines Accuses Airport of Foul Play Over Wireless Hotspot Locations   10/8/2005 - 882 views, 1 Comment

American Airlines, in turn, has filed a complaint with the FCC.

The bottom line is, of course, money. MassPort, which runs Logan, just installed an expensive wireless Internet system of their own, for which they are charging passengers $8.00 a day to access the Internet.

According to American Airlines attorney Alex Bramlett, Logan even went as far as trumping up specious “security concerns” as one of their excuses for demanding that American Airlines and Continental Airlines cease and desist from offering free wireless Internet access to their own passengers.

“Massport’s objective is clearly to force all WiFi access onto the Massport system, either through strong-arming other providers or by preventing carriers from providing Internet access to their own patrons,” said Bramlett.

MassPort contends that there are genuine security concerns, which include that “a profusion of airline-operated WiFi signals could jam radio frequencies used by the State Police and Transportation Security Administration,” according to a MassPort spokesperson, Danny Levy.

Added MassPort attorney Christine Gill, “As an airport operator in the post-9/11 world, Massport’s primary function is to maintain a safe and secure facility for passengers in a highly complex environment. ‘The proliferation of individual WiFi antennas at Logan could cause radio interference and disrupt the existing or planned communications of the TSA, State Police, and airlines.”

Quick, we need a corollary to Godwin’s Law. This, from this day forth, shall be known as “Mitchell’s Law of 9/11 Excuse” or, simply, “The 9/11 Excuse”:

“Any time that the specter of 9/11 is raised as the foundation for an action, the probability that the action is unnecessary and over-reaching approaches 1.”

And the corollary to Mitchell’s Law, known simply as “The 9/11 Corollary”, is:

“If the only explanation given for an action is ‘9/11′, the probability that the action is necessary approaches 0, and that the 9/11 excuse is specious approaches 1.”

[Godwin’s law, named after my colleague Mike Godwin, is “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1″]