"Sir, please switch off your phone"
I'm on a South African Airways A340 the week before Xmas. With 12 hours ahead of me I plug my hideously expensive Bose cans into my iPhone 3GS and fire up an old episode of Spooks.
Before the opening credits are through comes the dreaded tap on the shoulder:
"Sir, please switch off your phone now".
"It's in Airplane mode, which makes it an iPod"
"Sir, I know the difference between an iPhone and an iPod and that's an iPhone. Please switch it off".
Not wanting to spend Xmas in a police cell I meekly but grudgingly complied.
But could the flight attendant really see the telltale mic slit in the gloom of economy class, or didn't she know that Pods now look like phones?
Well, nobody gave me a Touch for Xmas, but would it have saved me? Or would that have led to another argument about whether all those WiFi enabled laptops were more likely to bring down the plane than my 3G signal?
When is a Touch a phone? Discuss.