Duck Tape, Duct Tape, BA and Innovation

I read today that Mark Zuckerberg (brother of Randi) used duck tape to seal the camera of his computer. Apparently he was worried about spies and hackers having a good look at him and his actions. It reminded me of my recent flight (returning from Dad’s funeral with sister Mir) on British Airways (BA 92) from Toronto to London.

My sister Mir and I were given a bulkhead seat (good). But I couldn’t watch video (bad) since my video screen kept swiveling around. I wanted to get to the bottom of this. It turned out that the shaft of the video had come loose.

But an enterprising employee of BA had come to the rescue. Long before our flight I hasten to add.

With duct tape!!! Duct tape, duck tape, masking tape, they are all related to one another. You can read about the history of tapes that have one adhesive side on Wikipedia and I won’t bore you here.  But what amused me is this brave attempt (again, it was there when we sat down) to solve the problem with duck tape (rather than actually fix the swivel).

The duck tape fix didn’t succeed in the end, and I couldn’t get the screen to face me. But nevertheless, I do applaud their efforts.

I’m just hoping that they don’t use the same technology to fix the things that help the planes take off, fly and land, such as their hydraulic systems, wings, engines, landing gear and so on.

Oh, and finally, don’t get me wrong. I love BA. Even when they show their more human side.

Especially when they do.