"Passengers saw landing drama unfold on TV"

Should the airborne satellite TV have been turned off by JetBlue flight crew? We think turning off the in-flight DirecTV might have caused more panic.

Passengers saw landing drama unfold on TV
The airliner circled Southern California for hours, crippled by a faulty landing gear, while inside its cabin 140 passengers watched their own life-and-death drama unfolding on live television.

"It was very weird. It would've been so much calmer without" the televisions, Pia Varma of Los Angeles said after the plane skidded to a safe landing Wednesday evening in a stream of sparks and burning tires. No one was hurt.

Varma, 23, and other passengers said the plane's monitors carried live DirectTV broadcasts on the plane's problems until just a few minutes before landing at Los Angeles International Airport.

What a terrible press day for in-flight entertainment.

Couldn't they find any better passenger quotes? Here are our suggestions for better PR spin.

Having DirecTV allowed us to keep laughing during the lengthy fuel-burning process when we circled the airport for hours. Several family-friendly movies on HBO kept our younger daughters entertained the whole time. Mary, 39, mother of two

Watching our plane on live TV was assuring. People cared about our situation, and we weren't kept in the dark as disconnected passengers. The live information was very helpful. Dan, 45, business traveller

LiveTV, the company that makes airborne satellite TV antennas for commerical aircraft, was aquired in 2002 by JetBlue for $41 million in cash and the retirement of $39 million of LiveTV debt. LiveTV's inflight entertainment systems are partially responsible for JetBlue's success.

Update Friday, Sept 23 2005- Worse yet title from this in The Scotsman, The latest in in-flight entertainment - watching your plane crash landing, with possibly our favorite passenger quote.

"Let me tell you that did not seem like three hours," said Alexandria Jacobs, of New York, who is heavily pregnant.

"The first hour didn't seem that scary, even the second hour. It wasn't until we got into the final hour, and the experience of watching it on TV.

"It was surreal that you could plunge to your doom and watch it live on TV. It was all too post-postmodern."

Update 9/28/2005 You can hear some audio from the JetBlue emergency landing at LAX in the linked podcast here.

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