Wifi in airlines

Airlines are gearing up to offer broadband services 30,000 feet above sea level. In the United States, American Airlines plans to test a broadband flight by the end of 2007, and its fleet of Boeing 767s that fly across the Atlantic will be ready to serve passengers with Net access sometime in 2008. Virgin America plans to integrate broadband into its existing seat-back entertainment system on all its Airbus A320s. Since as many as 70 percent of passengers want wireless Internet (Wi-Fi) and many of them would be willing to change airline loyalty for the service. Airlines major would rush up to lure customers.

This isn’t the first time airlines have experimented with airborne broadband. Boeing offered a service called Connexion, which Lufthansa and several Asian airlines used in 2004. But in August 2006, Boeing discontinued the service, saying the market they’d hoped for hadn’t materialized. Part of the problem was that the antennas used to pick up the satellite signal were heavy and only appropriate for wide-body planes like a 747. The antennas created drag and increased a plane’s fuel burn. However, the technology has changed now and lighter, cheaper antennas and easier broadband services have made the services a viable possibility. Seeing the robusting demand, Indian airlines majors may follow their american counterparts.

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