Germany’s largest airline, Lufthansa, announced plans to bring back WiFi and phone services. Within forthcoming months, the carrier said they would bring back the service, beginning with flights between the United States and Europe. The service will likely be fleet-wide by mid 2010.
You might recall Lufthansa offering WiFi three years, however the airline removed the service citing weak demand. The price of WiFi used to be $10 per hour, or $27 for the entire flight; in-flight calls tended to be a costly $3 a minute. Yet this time, more carriers have adopted WiFi, making the public more aware of the service, and the cost of the service will likely be much cheaper.
Additionally, the carrier aims to allow passengers on international flights to make calls, and use their high-speed internet. The carrier wants to gain a competitive advantage by being the first carrier to offer high-speed connections for multiple devices.
The new system will utilize Panasonic’s FlyNet, a satellite-based technology, on-board the carrier’s aircraft. With this, Lufthansa will not only be on the carriers-that-offer-WiFi list, but this will likely bring in a good amount of revenue for the airline.
2 Comments
October 12, 2009 at 11:18 pm
Not sure how much they plan on charging for the phone, but with WiFi, what is to stop people from using Skype and Google Voice?
October 12, 2009 at 11:37 pm
It’s an interesting issue – some passengers in the U.S. have complained about those talking while on-board. International carriers are ahead of U.S. carriers when it comes to on-board phone service.
There’s a really good blog post by the NY Times about this issue – http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/28/the-in-flight-menace-wireless-chatter/
As for Skype and Google Voice, the high-speed (and just about all in-flight WiFi) internet certainly will allow for that – most carriers appear to be evaluating passenger feedback, through surveys, on the issue.
Obviously airline cannot say “no talking” on your phone, but where’s the line?