“And Now for Your Latest In-Flight Entertainment Turn To Any Channel and Watch How We’re Preparing This Plane to Crash Land; Be Sure to Hear the Experts on the Ground Give the Odds for Our Success!”

One of the selling points for the Jet Blue low fare US airline is that each plane has a TV screen in the back of each passenger seat and its DirecTV system carries a large choice of local and cable networks live throughout flight.

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Which is real nice unless the plane you’re traveling on becomes the subject of live television reports that it is in trouble, its front landing gear is out of position and the pilots are getting the plane ready for a crash landing at Los Angeles International. The airline maintained the live television system throughout the ordeal and a spokesman said later that if such an event happened again they’d still keep the TV on!

There was a happy ending. The pilot after burning fuel for about three hours made a perfect landing keeping the nose wheels off the ground for as long as possible. He took up most of the 10,000-foot (3,000 meter) runway but everyone got off alive and well.

But on the plane for three hours it was an experience that was almost indescribable for 140 passengers. Alexandra Jacobs, told it best. “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-modern.”

Another passenger said, “It was so eerie watching ourselves. It was unimaginable -- we heard people (on the ground) speculating about this and that.”

The nose wheels had failed to retract for Jet Blue Flight 292 after its takeoff from Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, a Los Angeles suburb. The pilots discovered the wheels had turned sideways and were stuck. The pilots told the passengers within 10 minutes that there was a problem.

The live Los Angeles television feeds were picked up clearly on the plane in addition to cable news. Passengers heard directly via the television that the plane, that had been flying circles over the Long Beach Airport to burn fuel, was now directed to land at Los Angeles because it had a longer runway and more emergency vehicles to deal with any calamity.

Passengers had mixed views about whether they should have had the TV on. The TV stations kept giving worst what-if scenarios that did not bring any joy on the plane, but on the other hand passengers said they felt comforted by knowing the latest news. To their credit, passengers said the Jet Blue pilot kept them fully informed of what was going on.

Jet Blue has a reputation for keeping live news on board during the darkest times, most notably during 9/11. It is in contrast to airlines that have traditionally tried to ensure passengers are not offended by in-flight entertainment, which is why to this day many airlines still censor movies shown on board.

Howard Averill, chief financial officer for NBC-Universal Pictures and a passenger on the plane said, “I think on balance people were not upset.” But he also said there were times one could tell people had had enough and would pull off their earphones after hearing something they didn’t like. Another passenger said, “It was absolutely terrifying. Seeing the events broadcast made it completely surreal and detached me from the event…. It only exacerbated the situation and my fear.”

In common with other major news events these days, the passengers became citizen journalists, recording on their mobile phone cameras what was happening on board the plane but, frustratingly, they could not get any transmission signal. Others, perhaps a bit more practical, recorded messages to their loved ones in the hope their phones would be found.

The ethics issue of whether Jet Blue was right to keep its TV system on until just five minutes before the landing is one that will probably be debated in the airline industry and elsewhere for many months to come.

But it does bring to the debate that more and more airlines are planning to deliver live news to aircraft in flight – whether via satellite-delivered television signals or via wireless Internet, and they need to have some policies in place for just such occurrences.

Airlines have long had an advertising policy that if there is a major crash then all of its television and print advertising is pulled for a number of days. Those that ran taped news broadcasts on board would have plane crashes edited out. But what should happen if there is an airline crash somewhere in the world and live television pictures of that crash are available on an airline’s live TV system?

And let’s not forget the Internet. Does the airline want all that streaming video, still pictures and text of a calamity, especially one of its own, on board?

The trend since the Internet is that people have an insatiable desire for instant breaking news. Airlines, spotting that trend, are working to make that immediacy available, but now they must ask themselves whether there are limits to what are in the public’s best interests on what should be known on board.

It’s a debate that has good arguments on both sides ranging from the right to know to whether there is a right to scare in a confined setting.

Editors Note: Should Jet Blue have left its TV system on? Link to vote@followthemedia.com and signify in the subject line: Jet Blue Yes or Jet Blue No

“And Now for Your Latest In-Flight Entertainment Turn To Any Channel and Watch How We’re Preparing This Plane to Crash Land; Be Sure to Hear the Experts on the Ground Give the Odds for Our Success!”

And if you think that headline is pure fiction, think again. It just happened!