Welcome aboard EK. Please do not switch off your mobile phone

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Dave Noble

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Oct 10, 2005
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Beeb said:
Dubai-based Emirates will become the first airline to allow passengers to make mobile phone calls on its flights.
It has signed a deal with Aeromobile to provide the technology that allows mobiles to be safely used on board.

Emirates expects to launch the service on one of its Boeing 777 planes as early as January next year.

The news comes just months after Ryanair announced it planned to launch a similar service in mid-2007 - subject to regulatory approval.

Full article at BBC NEWS | Business | Emirates 'to debut mobile calls'
 
Kiwi Flyer said:
Any word on pricing?
The way Qantas and Ryanair will make money on their inflight mobile phone services is by charging international roam rates. Effectively, the Aeromobile or OnAir network becomes its own country, with its own country code (although people dialing won't see that as they will just dial the recipients normal mobile number and let the roaming do the rest).
cheers
CrazyDave
 
crazydave98 said:
The way Qantas and Ryanair will make money on their inflight mobile phone services is by charging international roam rates. Effectively, the Aeromobile or OnAir network becomes its own country, with its own country code (although people dialing won't see that as they will just dial the recipients normal mobile number and let the roaming do the rest).
cheers
CrazyDave
And of course international roaming to different countries is charged at different rates. So I certainly don't expect it to be a "cheap" country as far as roaming goes.

Also note that the system Qantas are looking at will have very limited capacity. From memory it will be limited to something like 6 concurrent calls. I wonder what the limitations of the EK system will be.

I see people using it more for SMS than voice calls.
 
crazydave98 said:
The way Qantas and Ryanair will make money on their inflight mobile phone services is by charging international roam rates. Effectively, the Aeromobile or OnAir network becomes its own country, with its own country code (although people dialing won't see that as they will just dial the recipients normal mobile number and let the roaming do the rest).
cheers
CrazyDave

I would think that the callers would notice since they would, presumedly, have to enter the full international code for the destination ( such +61 2 rather than 02 ) when making a call to

Dave
 
Kiwi Flyer said:
There goes one of the last sanctuaries :(

Any word on pricing?

I would have thought that the cost per call will be dependant upon the mobile phone operator and what they elect to charge for calls from that "country" for the service you have rather than being determined by the airline

Dave
 
Dave Noble said:
I would think that the callers would notice since they would, presumedly, have to enter the full international code for the destination ( such +61 2 rather than 02 ) when making a call to

Dave

Not necessarily. I use + out of habit - saves having to remember to switch between 0 and + depending on where I am.
 
I am progressively switching all my mobile numbers to add +61 to all Oz numbers to avoid the problems when I travel.
 
Dave Noble said:
I would think that the callers would notice since they would, presumedly, have to enter the full international code for the destination ( such +61 2 rather than 02 ) when making a call to

Dave
Depends how they setup the call routing rules. It would be simple for someone like QF or DJ to route any call that is not prefixed by + or 0011 to Australia by stripping the leading 0 and prepending a +61. Thus making calls to Australia seem like they are "local". But of course call to anywhere else will need the + prefix.
 
Dave Noble said:
I would think that the callers would notice since they would, presumedly, have to enter the full international code for the destination ( such +61 2 rather than 02 ) when making a call to

Dave
True, but what I meant was a caller on the ground would just dial the normal mobile number of the person in the air without any prefixes - if the person in the aircraft has their phone on, they get hit for the roaming charges. Obviously anyone in the aircraft is in a foreign "country" and would need to dial the international access code + australia 61 code etc.
 
Mobile phones on planes! Just what we all wanted for Christmas!
 
JohnK said:
Mobile phones on planes! Just what we all wanted for Christmas!

You do? Then can you please have all the phone in the air users on your flights and leave mine phone free?
 
May have to revert to a form of the good old smoking/non-smoking days and have phoning/non-phoning zones at seat allocation.
 
simongr said:
I think someone is missing the [sarcasm] [/sarcasm] tags ;)
Whatever gives you that impression? Can't a person make a serious statement for a change. ;)
 
NM said:
I can see another use for those directional air vents on Qantas aircraft.
No need! The simplest solution would be to create a mini cabin behind economy, let's call it sub-economy class. The first 4 rows can be for recliners only and the last 4 rows for mobile phone users only. They can annoy the hell out of each other the entire flight.
 
JohnK said:
No need! The simplest solution would be to create a mini cabin behind economy, let's call it sub-economy class. The first 4 rows can be for recliners only and the last 4 rows for mobile phone users only. They can annoy the hell out of each other the entire flight.

I say put them all in the specially air-conditioned skyview cabin ;)
 
On 7's Sunrise show this morning (Friday) they reported that Qantas was considering offering the same service by allowing pax to use a mobile phone on their planes from next year.

They had a phone poll and 95% of the people did 'not' want mobile phones used in flight, and I agree. It is the only time that many of us who fly often know that we can not be contacted and gives me time to relax.
 
Maca44 said:
They had a phone poll and 95% of the people did 'not' want mobile phones used in flight, and I agree. It is the only time that many of us who fly often know that we can not be contacted and gives me time to relax.

If you don't want to be contacted, the phone has an OFF button

Dave
 
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