10,000th Airline Trip with In-Flight Mobile Phone Service

In-flight mobile phone service provider, OnAir has announced its 10,000th flight with the Mobile OnAir inflight connectivity service in commercial operation. The milestone underlines the speed with which OnAir services are becoming commonplace on-board aircraft: the number of flights with the service is set to exceed 100,000 before the end of the year.

The 10,000th flight itself was a TAP flight from Lisbon to Munich. Since December 2007, Mobile OnAir services have been used on flights to 162 cities in 34 countries in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Feedback from passengers and airlines underlines the growing popularity of the service thanks to its availability and ease of use - passengers use their mobile phones or BlackBerry-type devices just as they would on the ground.

Benoit Debains, CEO of OnAir, commented: "This is a significant milestone and underlines how quickly our operations are expanding across a variety of markets. The feedback from in-flight experience shows that phone use inside aircraft does not create any discomfort to passengers - we have not heard of one single complaint. In addition, we are seeing a host of new applications which will deliver additional services."

Confirmed demand for inflight passenger communications is reflected in the growing number of commercial airlines and private aviation companies which either currently offer OnAir inflight communications services or will offer them in the near future. This includes airlines such as Air Asia, AirAsia X, Airblue, British Airways, bmi, Jazeera, Kingfisher, Oman Air, Qantas, Royal Jordanian, Ryanair, Shenzhen Airlines, TAM, TAP and Wataniya Airways. In addition, OnAir is negotiating agreements with a number of major airlines which will be announced during the course of 2009.

OnAir also serves private VIP and Governmental customers through partnerships with Airbus Corporate Jets, Aviation Centre Cologne and Jet Aviation.

According to a recent passenger survey, 80% of passengers who have used Mobile OnAir services on selected flights would like these services to be available on every flight.

Posted to the site on 30th March 2009