By Jo Best, 28 September 2009 15:31
NEWS
Air travellers flying between London and New York won't have to go mobile cold turkey from tomorrow.
On Tuesday, BA will go live with an in-flight connectivity service from OnAir, which will see passengers on the all business class route able to use their mobiles to send texts or emails and browse the web.
The service will be available on two Airbus A318s flying between London City Airport and New York's JFK.
(Photo credit: eisenbahner via Flickr.com under the following Creative Commons licence)
It will be priced at international roaming rates, a spokesman for BA said.
At present, no voice service will be offered on the planes. According to the BA spokesman, the option isn't available due to a strong divide in customers' opinion on whether calls should be allowed on the service, leading the airline to "err on the side of caution". Whether voice calls will be offered in future will depend on customer feedback, he added.
Despite the OnAir rollout, British Airways CEO Willie Walsh recently said the airline will not extend in-flight mobile comms to any of its aircraft already in service.
BA's low-budget rival RyanAir also has plans to put mobile connectivity across its fleet. In February of this year, the airline announced it will make OnAir's service available on all of its planes by 2010.
Comments
There are 3 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
If they are offering data connectivity then VOIP will surely also work, meaning voice calls will be possible?
2. karen challinor
DOOBEDOODOO DOOBEDOODOO DOOBEDOODOO DOO
...
HELLO! .... I'M ON THE PLANE .... WHAT! .......WHAT!! ........... NO IT'S RUBBISH !!! .... HANG ON I'LL READ YOU THE MINUTES ....YES ... WHAT!! ....
at this point the sky marshal shot the man with the mobile phone and the rest of the passengers gave the man a medal
3. Jo Best
A good question and one I did put to BA, who say that no VoIP calls will be possible over the service.