Dear Aunt TUAW: Why am I in Atlanta?

Dear Aunt TUAW,

I recently upgraded to iOS 5 on my 3GS. Oddest thing happened yesterday. I am sitting on board a jet in NH waiting to take off for Atllanta. I pull up Find My Friends to see where a few people are at and it shows me on the tarmac at the Atlanta airport. Thinking it might be an app error, I pull up Google Earth and it showed the same thing. I was on a Delta flight with wifi but had not connected to the network. I felt like I was in a Star Trek time warp. Any thoughts?

Your loving nephew,

Chad

Dear Chad,

Auntie thought this might have to do with the plane's onboard WiFi system, so she turned to Uncle Steve to explain the situation. Steve replies, "Just because your iPhone wasn't connected to the network doesn't mean it wasn't using the airplane's Wi-Fi for geolocation. I had the same thing happen on a cruise last year. The ship had a home base of Port Canaveral, Florida, so all of the onboard networks were set so that any device locally thought they were sitting at port in Florida -- even when we were in St. Petersburg, Russia!

"Chances are that all of Delta's aircraft Wi-Fi systems are set to show Atlanta as their "home base" location and that's what you were seeing. Bizarre, isn't it?!"

Auntie hopes this helps explain what may have happened.

Hugs,

Auntie T.