You know that awkward stage on a flight — from boarding to after ascent, and from the beginning of the descent to having your feet firmly on the earth — where you don’t quite know how to keep yourself entertained? Well, Kulula just announced that it will now allow you to use electronic devices from gate to gate. So you can play Candy Crush all the time during a flight, without having to stash your screen away.
The local, green-clad airline will now allow tablets, e-readers, smartphones, smartwatches and other arb devices like MP3 players (Who even still has one? Seriously, raise your hand if you have one) and “electronic toys” (Does a Switch count in this category? Asking for a friend). You can essentially use any battery-powered electronic device throughout all flight stages now. Ultimate win! Now you can keep watching (offline) episodes of Happy! as you’re taxiing and taking off, or touching down.
Plane as day
“We have worked very closely with the South African Aviation authority to approve this new policy on our aircraft, which is a significant enhancement to our customer experience onboard”, says Shaun Pozyn, head of marketing at kulula.com.
“Taking into consideration our commitment to safety and the needs of our passengers, we are delighted to announce that passengers will now be able to read e-books, play games, watch videos and get some business done from gate to gate. In short this means that passengers can now use their devices as soon as they set foot onboard our aircraft and keep it on for their entire journey.”
All excitement aside, remember that you’ll still need to keep all these devices in airplane mode — so no sneaky calls to bae during liftoff telling them how much you miss them already. We’re also not clear on how headphones are impacted. We recall those making flight attendants nervous on takeoff and landing, from time to time. If they’re connected to an electronic device, though…