Cell Phones on a Plane!

Published by AirlineFanatic | Filed under airline technology

The march towards in-flight connectivity continues on at an ever faster pace. Last week JetBlue started testing their BetaBlue service, which for the time being gives its passengers access to Yahoo! Mail or corporate email via a wifi enabled Blackberry. Air France meanwhile is moving forward with their own set of tests, involving the use of cell phones (mobile phones for you European folk). Hold your horses, before you stop flying them completely, you should know this is only a test…for now.

Air France has outfitted one of their A318s with equipment that basically lets cell phones do anything in the air they can do on the ground. For the first three months of operation only data transmission will be enabled - ie text messages and Internet over the regular cell phone network. After that however voice calls will be allowed while passengers reactions are recorded via surveys at the end of every flight. Based on the results of that survey, Air France will then decide if this service should be limited to data use but no voice calls, and whether or not they will expand the service to their entire fleet.

European low cost carrier Ryanair also plans to allow mobile phone use in-flight. They are forgoing the whole “lets see how customers like it” phase and equipping all 150 aircraft in the fleet with tiny mobile phone stations. They claim customers wont mind the distractions on the shorter, busy routes Ryanair flies. I’m sure the fact that Ryanair gets a cut of the sky high (oh that was a good pun) international roaming rates customers will be charged when they use the service has nothing to do with it either.

Other airlines are getting in on the testing action as well. Qantas has been quietly testing their own in-flight data service for cellphones on a 767; with over 19,000 passengers having used the service to date. They have no plans to add voice service, but might consider going fleet wide with data service. Emirates is also equipping its entire fleet with the technology, forgoing the testing period. I think this is probably because of their desperation to have the latest and great of everything in the airline industry and less because it may actually be useful to passengers.

All the services being tested by airlines will work in the middle of the ocean, an upgrade over previous versions, because they connect via satellite, rather than via ground towers. Luckily for those of us flying in the United States, we won’t have to worry about the person next to us yelling for five hours across the country any time soon. The FTC decided earlier this year there would be no use of cellphones in flight, and we all know how fast out wonderful government can change their mind once they’ve come up with a position.

[via The Economist (subscription required)]

Technorati Tags: air france, cell phones, emirates, qantas, ryanair

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