All pictures deleted from camera while on a plane can this be recovered?

That depends on what have you done to this camera since the deletion.
In fact, after the deleting process, the deleted photos on this chip of your camera are not actually wiped out as you normally think. They are still stored on this memory card and only become invisible. But, they cannot be there forever. They can be rewritten by anything new on the same memory card. So, you should take care.
Plunge this camera to your computer and download a deleted photo recovery freeware to help you out:
http://blog4mark.blogspot.com/2012/12/photo-recovery-after-delete.html
I believe this data recovery freeware can work perfectly on your memory card just in the same way as it completely retrieves all the deleted data of my friend off from his phone memory card. Just give it a shot!
Directly download this freeware here:
http://www.freeware-fix.blogspot.com/2013/02/photo-recovery.html
PS: If you don't want to encounter the similar data recovery problems, you'd better back up everything important well in the future.

Yes this can. Very easily also. See this link. Just remember when recovering to save your recovered photos onto your hard drive, and not back onto your memory card as that may overwrite lost photos prior to recovery.