In-flight mobile services are in demand and could become common place in the not too distant future, according to a company in the business.
In-flight connectivity provider AeroMobile head of revenue development Kevin Rogers told What Mobile its service was in operation on eight airlines and expected to be installed on another four this year. Growth was strong, he said and airlines were recognising this demand.
This would mean the 140 planes the service was installed on would double this year, Mr Rogers said.
“I think if you look forward four or five years it will become common place to get on an aircraft where you can connect”
First things first: will the plane fall out of the sky if mobile services are used in-flight?
Mr Rogers said there were no safety issues with the system. Part of why in-flight mobile services were not common was that aviation authorities had very strict rules about safety and all new equipment on a plan must be certified air worthy by the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) or the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and this was a “very rigorous and thorough” certification process, he said.
“Anything from a new engine to this system to a new label on a toilet door, they all have to be certified for air safety and that process takes a long time.”
The rules in place about safety and mobile phones in particular did not change, even when a system was installed, he said, which meant mobile phones must be switched off for taxi, take off and landing.
However the FAA was reviewing the use of personal electronic devices (PED) in the aircraft because of the overall recognition that some of the existing laws were outdated, Mr Rogers said. Mobiles transmitted when switched on, Mr Rogers said, but the AeroMobile system controlled the mobile phone in the aircraft to a very low power, and the system was thoroughly tested and verified to ensure no interference with aircraft systems, before it was certified as air worthy, he said.
“So first and foremost there is absolutely no air safety issue whatsoever and the fundamental principle behind that is that all this system is certified by the safety authorities such as FAA and EASA before it’s allowed to go onto that aircraft and there’s a very very rigorous and lengthy certification process for that to happen.”
A Civil Aviation Authority spokesman elaborated, saying there were a very few number of flights that had a built in mobile service within the air craft, which in effect put a mobile transmitter and receiver mast in the cabin and passengers would be instructed about using this – otherwise, phones must remain in flight mode.
He said when the service was built into the aircraft, mobile phones only transmitted a very low level of signal to connect with it, and the rest of the system was shielded from the physical parts of the aircraft as well, such as instrumentation and communications. The problem came when there wasn’t a system installed, because phones not in flight mode would gradually increase signal power as they tried to connect with a mast and interference problems could occur, the spokesman said.
FAA and IATA certified these systems generally. Mobile phones and PEDs needed to be switched off at take off and landing due to possible interference problems, the spokesman said. The FAA were currently looking into regulation around mobile phones and PEDs, he said.
How does it work?
Mr Rogers said in simple terms, the system consisted of a picocell, which was like a small mobile base station, a server, and then feeder cables, or the antenna that run through the cabin in the ceiling which was basically an aerial that allowed mobile phones to connect to the network. This transmitted the network throughout the cabin. Signals would then be transmitted from the system through a satellite communications system, which would also need to be fitted on some air craft. Both systems would need to certified, he said.
“Essentially the service is a roaming service…so basically what we’re doing is creating a mobile network inside the cabin…that network needs to connect to the ground and that connection is done through a satellite link.”
To install this system, the aircraft needed to be on the ground for a maintenance check, which would need to be scheduled in, another reason for the delay in getting the service off the ground, Mr Rogers said.
What’ll it cost me, Mac?
The service could be operated all over the world, Mr Rogers said, and was currently operating on Emirates (United Arab Emirates), Virgin Atlantic (United Kingdom) and Lufthansa (Germany)
The prices for in-flight use on a mobile phone were set by the mobile operators, he said, and prices varied, however the company had seen that mobile operators were setting the price as no worse than the rest of the world international roaming rates.
AeroMobile expected to add four more airlines to its service operators this year, with six of its current eight added in the last 12 months. Virgin Atlantic in the UK operated the service on half its fleet, flying about 10-15 flights a day between the UK and the USA, with the service enabled, and 20% to 25% of the cabin was using the service, he said.
