The revolution will not be televised

And to start with it’s not all flights on both airlines. On the Virgin Australia side, it’s mainline services only: NZ, regional and the former V Australia are not included in the approval. For Qantas, added to the existing Jetconnect approvals are international and domestic Qantas mainline and then subsequently Jetstar and QantasLink. But Tigerair was not included.

But even after the inevitable “I was allowed to use it on my last flight!” arguments, there will be consequences for passengers: even using a conservative estimate of 30 to 60 minutes’ extra usage time during taxi, takeoff, climb, approach and landing, passengers’ devices are likely to start getting low on power.

And very few Australian aircraft operating domestic flights offer at-seat AC or USB sockets, especially in economy.

Qantas offers power in business class on its 717 and A330 fleets, and in economy on domestic A330-200s. Power is also available throughout on a sub-set of its Boeing 737-800 fleet (the ones, ironically, that have seatback entertainment).

Virgin Australia, meanwhile, offers power only in business class on its 737-800s, and throughout its newer A330s – VH‑XFC and onwards.

It’s a truism that even as battery technology improves in efficiency and storage, devices get smaller and more demanding. Battery anxiety is likely to rise.

And the airlines will lose out on potential profit if it does.

Virgin Australia is already offering wireless streaming entertainment to passengers’ own devices, and Qantas is set to expand its Q Streaming service to the Boeing 737-800 subfleet that currently lacks inflight entertainment. By doing so, Qantas will depart from its existing Q Streaming model on 767 and 717 flights, where iPads are provided, to one where passengers provide their own devices.

Their own devices, with their own batteries, connecting over Wi-Fi, after a trip to the airport, using mobile boarding passes and iBeaconfunctionality, a spell at the airport getting things done (or taking a break), and the high-power network-finding required once inside the aircraft before the doors close.

That’s a recipe for a device that’s dead on arrival – if not before.

The consequence will be that passengers start bringing their own external lithium-ion batteries. Power packs containing 10,000mAh (around five times the iPhone 5, or around 10 per cent more than an iPad Air) are widely available for under $25.

Yet lithium-ion batteries have a nasty habit of catching fire quite spectacularly. Numerous incidents, whether of the sort where a passenger has batteries in their checked luggage that short-circuit, or where a battery in the cabin is crushed in an unfortunate incident with a reclining mechanism, have demonstrated their equal flammability and fragility.

More batteries on board is probably not the best of outcomes.

A compounding issue of using devices more: security concerns over increasingly compact improvised explosives concealed within small personal electronics have led to several nations requiring that any device to be carried on board must be switched on at the request of a security staffer.

If the device is dead, then what happens next varies by airline. British Airways initially maintained that the passenger – not just the device – may not fly on their scheduled flight. As if having to abandon your iPad or phone wasn’t bad enough.

While BA has now synchronised with the rest of the industry and now states that just the device may not fly, the airline sums the problem up succinctly: “If you are flying as a transfer customer, especially those on long journeys, please make sure that you not deplete power in your devices while on the first part of your journey. ” So what’s the solution? With both Qantas and Virgin releasing dire annual results, neither airline has a particular interest in increasing capital expenditure on the passenger experience right now, especially at the back of the plane.

The most efficient answer is likely to be in the lounge and at the gate: a forest of full-power, two-ampere USB charging stations, similar to the ones shooting up at forward-thinking US airports.

Even a 15-minute jolt of power while waiting for a flight can make a real difference to that little green battery line – and to whether a passenger feels comfortable using their device.