Gizmodo: air france

Roll Out Of Air France's In-Flight Cellphone Service Experiences Turbulence

Elaine Chow — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 15:30:00 EDT

Air France's in-flight cellphone trial has finally taken off, but with bumpy results. The New York Times hitched a ride on the French carrier recently and found several bugs in the system:

• The quality is patchy and keeps most in-flight calls short and tinny-sounding. One receiver of an OnAir call complained that it sounded like "talking to a small robot."
• Hefty roaming charges of up to 3 euros ($4.72) a minute.
• Calls made from the plane to the ground usually need a few tries to actually connect. Calls made from the ground to the plane tend to go directly to voice mail.
• Only six passengers can get a signal at any one time to avoid interfering with aircraft equipment. OnAir says the capacity will double to 12 in the coming weeks.
• Blackberry users had trouble downloading email messages.

Oh yeah, and there's that whole factor of whether people want to be disturbed by other passengers yakking on cellphones in the first place. At least one other airline, Lufthansa, decided not to offer the service after customers pointedly asked them not to. [New York Times]

Skype, Porn May Not Fly In Friendly Skies

Wilson Rothman — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 12:45:00 EST

The good news is, all you guys who have been dreading the use of internet calling on airplanes may be in luck, because airlines and airborne service providers alike are considering a ban on Skype. The bad news is, they're also considering a ban on that age-old lonely traveler's companion, porn, says the AP. Here's a list of soon-to-be-Wi-Fi'd airlines and what services they plan to ban:

• American Airlines and Alaskan Airlines are saying ix-nay to Ype-Skay, but say there's no plan to lock out the nudie sites. The head of Aircell, which is wiring up these planes, cited a likelihood that "decency and good sense and normal behavior" will guide people's surfing decisions.

• Virgin America is considering a Skype ban. Virgin's director of in-flight entertainment cited concerns about passengers "yapping away or playing on a boom box." (Boom box? WTF?) Virgin will give parents the opportunity to control their kids net access, and may limit large downloads.

• Australia's Qantas Airways is testing high-speed net access by Panasonic Avionics Corp., which plans to block sites from "an objectionable list," including sites that feature porn or violence. (Note to grammar nuts: we're pretty sure they mean the sites are objectionable, not the list itself.) They may block Skype calls on the PC, but not on Wi-Fi handsets, which demand less bandwidth. Panasonic says that airlines could block incoming calls—and annoying ringtones.

• Air France is going to wait and see about its OnAir system for cellphone calls, setting up rules only after complaints start coming in. How laissez-faire!

The AP story also raises an important legal question: If you hack a website or engage in some RIAA-hatin' file swapping on a flight between New York and Nova Scotia, which country's laws apply? [AP; source image]

Air France Makes In-Flight Calling Possible, Gallic Shrugs All Round

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 05:21:20 EST

Air France is to let passengers loose on their cellphones by turning on its in-flight mobile data and voice system. An initial three-month trial period will only allow SMS and mobile emails, with voice calls expected to come later. Although this is the first European carrier to allow mobile devices to be used, one wonders whether the famously laconic French will be le bothered by the news.

The system, dubbed "OnAir", which was first mooted last year, has been pushed back repeatedly during development. Just one of its planes, an Airbus A318, has had the system installed, and the test is expected to run for six months. OnAir will only be in use when flying above 10,000 feet, and it will apparently set you back about the same as international calling—around $2.50 per minute. – Kit Eaton [Wi-Fi Net News via Boy Genius Report]