Easier if you have a vast domestic flight market (US, China, etc), but not really practical if you're flying across borders, which is the base case in Europe, much of Asia, etc.
With traditional outlets you also inherit the whole legacy mess of competing standards for power mains. You don't want to feed 240V to a NEMA 1-15 outlet and melt someone's device mid-flight.
I do wonder if in some far future we'll just replace wall outlets with USBs for ordinary appliances, reserving traditional outlets for major power draws like stovetops, HVAC, industrial equipment etc. Maybe planes are the vanguard of this future?
alt Hacker News
Too tricky for international flights.
Easier if you have a vast domestic flight market (US, China, etc), but not really practical if you're flying across borders, which is the base case in Europe, much of Asia, etc.
With traditional outlets you also inherit the whole legacy mess of competing standards for power mains. You don't want to feed 240V to a NEMA 1-15 outlet and melt someone's device mid-flight.
I do wonder if in some far future we'll just replace wall outlets with USBs for ordinary appliances, reserving traditional outlets for major power draws like stovetops, HVAC, industrial equipment etc. Maybe planes are the vanguard of this future?