Airlines and aircraft makers have been striving to improve this with the growing use of wireless devices and the number of people who don’t want to be disconnected, even 35,000 feet up. Engineers at Chicago-based Boeing Co. used sacks of potatoes as stand-ins for passengers as they worked to eliminate weak spots in in-flight wireless signals. They needed full planes to get accurate results during signal testing, but they couldn’t ask people to sit motionless for days while data was gathered.
“That’s where potatoes come into the picture,” Boeing spokesman Adam Tischler said. It turns out that potatoes-because of their water content and chemistry-absorb and reflect radio wave signals much the same way as the human body does, making them suitable substitutes for airline passengers.
“It’s a testament to the ingenuity of these engineers. They didn’t go in with potatoes as the plan,” Tischler said. Its conclusions led the Boeing researchers to wonder if potatoes might serve just as well as humans during their own signal testing. Despite some skepticism, they ended up buying 20,000 pounds of them. Video and photos of the work, which started in 2006, show a decommissioned airplane loaded with row upon row of potato sacks that look like large, lumpy passengers. The sacks sit eerily still in the seats as the engineers collect data on the strength of wireless signals in various spots. The Boeing engineers added some complicated statistical analysis and the result was a proprietary system for fine tuning Internet signals so they would be strong and reliable wherever a laptop was used on a plane. Boeing says the system also ensures Wi-Fi signals won’t interfere with the plane’s sensitive navigation and communications equipment.
