Summit Management Services - Cedar Grove Travel

07/05/2026

07/05/2026

Very cool. Take a look

07/04/2026

Great trip

07/04/2026

Incredible. Crossing the Pacific

07/04/2026

Good to know. Share

07/04/2026

Happy Birthday America

07/04/2026

Interesting

In 2012, Boeing engineers needed to test how wireless signals, including in-flight Wi-Fi, would perform inside a fully occupied airplane cabin.

Using large groups of real passengers for repeated, lengthy measurements would have been impractical. Instead, they loaded a decommissioned aircraft with about 20,000 pounds of potatoes and placed them on the seats.

Potatoes have a high water content and interact with radio signals in ways sufficiently similar to those of the human body for this type of testing. This helped the team map signal strength and weak spots throughout the cabin under conditions simulating a plane packed with people.

The new measurement-and-analysis process, supported by the potato tests, reduced testing time from more than two weeks to ten hours, and the data was later validated with human stand-ins.

It was a practical and creative engineering solution to a tricky technical problem.