Settling himself into the first class seat of an overnight flight to Heathrow, investment banker A M Shah was hoping to make some last-minute calls from his BlackBerry. He had exactly 10 minutes to do that before the airhostess requested everyone to switch off their cellphones. As he hurriedly finished shooting off orders to his staff back at the head office, Shah wondered whether a time would come when he could use his PDA mid-air to catch up with his colleagues.

That time is here. Well almost. Moves are afoot to allow air passengers to use their PDAs (personal digital assistant) and cellphones during the entire course of the flight. Air France has become the first airline in the world to offer an in-flight mobile phone service. Flagged off at the fag end of last year, passengers travelling on board an Airbus A318 aircraft operating on the European routes can now send and receive SMSes, MMSes, emails via all cellphones with internet access. During the second half of the trial, passengers will be able to make and receive phone calls. Closer home, Kingfisher Airlines? long-haul passengers will follow in the footsteps of the Air France fliers in 2009, all thanks to OnAir?s mobile telephony system.

The way it works

The passenger?s BlackBerry, phone or other PDA connects to the OnAir system via a mini base-station on the aircraft, based around a picocell (a smaller version of a regular cellular base station), which picks up signals from PDAs and phones and sends them to a satellite. From there, they go to OnAir?s ground network, then out to the passenger?s usual telephone network. This process takes only a fraction of a second. Passengers? mobile phones only emit minimum power, thus not interfering with aircraft avionics or ground telecom network. To make a call on board the aircraft, passengers simply dial the international prefix (+) or 00 + country code + full number (without the 0).

?The OnAir mobile telephony service is currently available on a commercial trial basis on an Air France aircraft. BMI and TAP (from Portugal) will also run commercial trials, starting in the next few months. The first full-fleet deployment of OnAir?s services will be on Ryanair?s 200 Boeing 737s, starting with 25 aircraft in the beginning of the second quarter of 2008. OnAir?s services will also be deployed on Airbus and Boeing aircraft of AirAsia, AirAsiaX, Shenzhen Airlines, Kingfisher Airlines and Royal Jordanian,? says Benoit Debains, CEO, OnAir.

Other options

While using cell phones during a flight is a novelty, it isn?t as if passengers were twiddling their thumbs all this while. Airliners have been providing seat-back phones and email facilities on their inflight entertainment (IFE) screens using the aeroplane?s communication backbone. ?The V-port system on our flights offers air to ground SMS text messaging to mobile phones as well as seat to seat message facility. The handset also doubles up as a phone to call your friends at home or even on the flight. Passengers are able to email friends and surf the web while corporate travellers remain connected with their emails throughout the flight,? says Neha Lidder Ganju, marketing manager, Virgin Atlantic India.

Seatback SMS and email service, allowing passenger to send and receive emails and SMS from the seatback TV screen to anywhere in the world, is available on quite a few airlines. ?On our Airbus A340-500 personal email accounts such as Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo can be accessed on Wi-Fi enabled laptops. With the new wireless laptop system (that are provided), passengers can use their own email accounts, including corporate email, in a secure environment,? says an Emirates official. The onboard satellite phone on Emirates can be used to call any phone at $5 per minute. All major credit cards are accepted, as well as pre-paid phone cards.

With people, especially business travellers used to an always-on lifestyle, these services have found enthusiastic responses. Around 59% of airlines plan to offer in-flight Internet access by the end of 2008, according to the Airline IT Trends Survey conducted by SITA and Airline Business magazine.

Kunal Kumar, an analyst with Deloitte in New Delhi, recently travelled on Emirates Airline during the Dubai Shopping Festival. He used the in-flight satellite phone to call his mother in India. Kumar recounts his experience: ?This is a very unique service that allows passengers to call home. The sound quality is very good and it did not seem as if I was talking to my mother from 20,000 feet above sea level. It was a great experience. I think it is a very useful service and would help significantly in case of an emergency or a crisis.?

Costs vs benefits

There?s even more appeal for passengers on long-haul flights to be able to use their cell phones when travelling 30,000 feet above ground. It costs $1-3 for sending and receiving SMS via the airline?s IFE screen while calling up from a seat-back phone means $5 per minute. Once you switch to using your cellphone during a flight, the costs are comparable to those for normal international mobile phone calls. And if you are making internet-based calls, via the Internet browser on your PDA, a la Skype, that?s virtually free.

So what?s in it for airline majors? Ganju has this to say: ?While provision of in-flight entertainment and communication is today a differentiating factor, it has also become a part of passengers? expectations. While IFE has the potential to generate some revenue, it would not be enough to cover the total costs associated with the installation and running of IFE systems. The impact of IFE is felt, indirectly, through increase in passenger loyalty which has a positive impact on airline revenues.?

Agrees the Emirates official, ?As far as boosting the revenue of the airline is concerned, while there is a charge on the various communication facilities and it makes some contribution to revenue, this is not what the airline aims for. This service has been introduced to add quality to our in-flight products rather than to add on to the revenue of the airline.?

Issues of privacy

Along with the good news, there are apprehensions whether such an easy anytime access might change the ambience inside an aircraft. After all, would you like to be seated next to somebody narrating last night?s sordid happenings over the phone? Then there are other issues of privacy ? if you are checking out the details of your next product launch, you don?t want somebody peering over your shoulder. Those are questions that will have to be addressed as these services are rolled out. But as of now, the aeroplane is one of the few places when you can be officially unavailable ? and that last defence is about to be breached. Shah should be happy.