British Airways' London to New York route lets flyers use mobiles

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.

BA's Airbus A318's will feature the OnAir service
(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.