For many air travelers, flying has become an escape from the modern-day cyclone of phone calls, e-mail and instant text messages.
But some of the world's largest airlines are now rolling out technology that allows passengers to surf the Internet, check e-mail and beam text messages to the ground.
Lufthansa Airlines, the German carrier, begins flying a Boeing 747-400 on Wednesday between Frankfurt and Washington outfitted with Internet connectivity developed by the Boeing Co. Next month, British Airways plans to start a trial flight with the same technology between London and New York. Japan Airlines and SAS, the Scandinavian carrier, have signed contracts with Boeing to outfit nearly a dozen planes each to offer Internet service next year.
Later this month, Cathay Pacific, the airline based in Hong Kong, will offer e-mail service on 40 planes using technology developed by Tenzing Communications, a small company based in Seattle that is partly owned by Airbus, Boeing's rival.
Another system, co-developed by Tenzing and a company called ARINC, is already being used by Virgin Atlantic Airways, which has four planes that allow travelers to send brief text messages -- at US$2.50 a pop -- that are typed out on video screens on the backs of seats.
Virgin has a contract to upgrade by year's end its entire fleet with the technology, which has also been tested by Air Canada and Singapore Airlines.
Who needs it?
The big question is whether passengers -- especially business travelers -- will pay to plug into the digital grid at 9,000m.
Those airlines that use Boeing's service, called Connexion by Boeing, expect to charge passengers US$30 to US$35 a piece for unlimited Internet access. Tenzing executives said airlines carrying its e-mail system, which does not allow Internet surfing, were expected to charge US$10 to US$20.
"It all depends on the pricing," said Robert W. Mann, an airline consultant based in Port Washington, New York. "Anything airlines can do to empower business-traveler connectivity is good for the airlines. If they can do it while making a buck, so much the better. I think those things are doable and I think business travelers will like them."
Both Boeing and Airbus, the European consortium based in France, announced their intentions to provide Internet connectivity during the height of the dotcom bubble. The three largest airlines US said at the time that they were in contract talks with Connexion. But after the Sept. 11 attacks, and the slump in air traffic that followed, the airlines scrapped those plans.
The two aircraft makers nonetheless forged ahead with their projects, which are based on competing visions of what they think passengers want from Internet connectivity.
Boeing uses costly high-speed broadband transmission that allows Internet surfing because it says passengers want a full range of options. Tenzing and Airbus argue that most passengers just want an e-mail or messaging service.
Other companies also working on airborne connectivity are aiming their products elsewhere because they think the passenger market is too limited. Qualcomm has developed a broadband system that it hopes to sell to the federal government for security uses, said Jonas Neihardt, the company's vice president for federal government affairs.
Coffee, Ethernet or wireless, sir
Boeing and Lufthansa will be able to gauge whether their bet will pay off as the Frankfurt-Washington flight goes through its trial run in the next three months. Passengers will have access to the Internet in one of two ways: by running an Ethernet connection between their laptops and ports available on seats in first class, most of business class and the rear of economy class; or by using a wireless modem that taps into a "hotspot" throughout the cabin.
Lufthansa will not charge fees during the trial because it wants to see how passengers use the service, though the airline will ask each user how much he or she would pay, said Burkard Wigger, general manager of Lufthansa FlyNet, which is what the company calls its product.
Wigger said he expected Lufthansa to introduce the service more widely next year on long-haul flights, and to charge US$30 to US$35 a passenger using it.
The British Airways test will also run three months, starting on Feb. 18. But only passengers in the first three of four classes will have Internet access. And Boeing and British Airways have decided to charge about US$35 a use during the trial.
"It will help us better ascertain passenger desire, how the meter will run and what to charge for the flight segment," said Scott Carson, president of Connexion.
For broadband, each plane has to be fitted with various hardware and two large antennas that shoot data back and forth between satellite transponders, similar to the transmission of satellite television. Boeing leases the transponders for US$2 million each, said Bill Richards, Connexion's chief engineer.
Right now, Boeing leases only a handful of transponders, limiting Connexion's use to the North Atlantic. Carson said that as airlines in other parts of the world sign on, Boeing will increase the number of transponders to 50, then later to 80 or so. The company may eventually put its own transponders on satellites rather than leasing them, he said, a move that would cost tens to hundreds of millions of dollars for every installation.
Despite skepticism from Airbus and some industry experts, Carson said that "every study we've done over three and a half years has convinced us there is sufficient demand out there to justify this."
Most of the revenue from passenger fees will go to Boeing, and airlines will also pay Boeing to outfit their planes, Carson said.
"At the end of the day, I'm not sure I as a traveler would pay more to use the Internet on a plane," said Nicolas Owens, an aerospace analyst with Morningstar. "The market size I think is open to question. That said, I do see it becoming a sought-after and a standard type of feature as people realize the technology is out there."
Tenzing and Airbus are basing their product on existing satellite technology that airplanes use to communicate with the ground. This method is slower, but is cheaper and can be upgraded as demand increases, executives say.
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