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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