Recent news out from Apple announce iPod integration in airlines. This would be pretty nice, although something tells me it will be a first-class feature only; sad news for poor flyers.
In a perplexing turn of events, however, it turns out that the announcement may have been a little premature. A Dutch friend informs me that two of the airlines, Holland’s KLM and Air France, haven’t signed up to any agreement and actually are rather perturbed about the whole incident. Dutch article here, or a Babelfish snippet:
KLM reacted however astonished to the communication of Apple. “it is correct that exploring conversations have been but the chance that it does not continue is now much larger than that it continues, however,” a spokesman of the Dutch airline company said.
(Ah, automated translation. I wonder if Google’s service works better; it’s not available, yet, to translate from Dutch.)
This is the kind of thing you don’t expect to come out of Apple, given their notorious reactions to companies that do exactly this kind of thing to them. Considering they seem to all be airlines outside of America, perhaps there were wires crossed somewhere over the ocean. Without forthcoming information, and you can guarantee there won’t be, all we can do is watch on in amusement and puzzlement.