I flew with BA to Orlando recently and was surprised by the in-flight entertainment. There was a great selection of films on offer and I enjoyed watching Life of Pi and Argo. I then started searching the options displayed on the seat back screen to see what else there was and came across this screen:

Yes, this is a service offering passengers the chance to send screen messages to anyone else on the flight. Even if they don’t know them.

I was travelling without my children but back home, when I mentioned the in-flight chat option, my 10 year-old was very interested. I think that kids would definitely enjoy playing with this, and I wouldn’t mind mine messaging people they knew. But the problem is that if they do that, they are then agreeing to receive messages from strangers, which I wouldn’t be happy about.

So this means that on BA family flights with these screens I won’t be able to relax because I’ll have to keep a close eye what the kids are doing, to make sure they’re not being drawn into some kind of mile-high chatroom.

Here’s an armadillo I met at Busch Gardens in Florida. I don’t think he’s keen on in-flight chatrooms either: