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Britannia to issue WiFi PDAs to cabin crew

We have a choice, here;if this report is true, then either Britannia is utterly reckless with the lives of its employees and its passengers, or the dangers of WiFi have been assessed to be trivial on board a plane.

Sources have told NewsWireless net that all Britannia "Cabin Crew" - or in-cabin catering staff - have just been issued with Cassiopeia PDA's for on-board duty-free sales.

But within six weeks, the next stage of the project will be under way, when the PDAs get wireless networking.

The value won't initially be gained from in-air sales: crew will be able to collect email, notices, duty rosters and so on automatically when they walk into the crew room.

But when Civil Aviation Authority approval comes through - and Britannia can't see any reason to doubt that it will come through - the third stage will implement an access point in the plane, or at least a wireless peer-to-peer network of PDAs.

Not all staff are enthusiastic about this, but the advantage of using an in-flight wireless network is that they'll be able to do a full stock-control system in flight. So if there is only one pearl necklace on board, then as soon as it is sold, it will vanish from the database accessed by all the other Casio users.

There may even be a satellite Internet connection to the plane, allowing data to be sent back to headquarters for re-stocking.

More importantly, the satellite connection would mean that they could remove the Credit Card floor limit imposed by insurance underwriters. The credit authorisation could be gained immediately, and so purchases adding up to over £250 could be rung up on a single credit card.