British Airways introduces texts and emails for London to New York flights
If you can’t bear to be separated from your mobile phone on a flight, you now won’t have to if you’re a business class traveller fly
What is hopefully the start to a wider roll out of the service, BA has installed the in-flight OnAir comms facility which will allow you to send texts, emails and even browse the internet, all at international roaming rates.
Voice calls will not be enabled, not due to security risks or technical issues, but to avoid your in-flight neighbour getting ticked off with your conversations for 8 hours.
BA has said it could introduce the capability, but that it would depend on customer feedback.
Now the only issue keeping us from the luxury of checking our Facebook messages from 20,000 feet is the rather pricey plane fare of business class.
Hopefully over time the service will be available to BA’s wider customer base, although BA’s CEO Willie Walsh has already said OnAir will not be installed in older planes due to the costs involved.
That said, BA’s lower-budget rival Ryanair has said it will be adding the OnAir service to all of its planes by 2010. Hurrah!
Let us know what you think the OnAir service will do for longhaul flights below.
Via: Electricpig
Dan Grabham
Editor-in-Chief 