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Airlines set to install inflight e-mail

Mile-high Web access could help airlines boost revenues

Oct. 24 — Airplane flights, perhaps the final refuge
for travelers who want a break from their e-mails,
are about to get connected.

By Ron Lieber and J. Lynn Lunsford
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

AFTER YEARS OF ordering passengers to go offline
upon takeoff, a number of airlines are set to make it
possible to e-mail or even surf the Internet while mile-high.
Early next year, Lufthansa will become the first airline to
offer high-speed Internet access to passengers. British
Airways will follow suit soon after. Both carriers will be
using Connexion, a major new Boeing initiative. It should
also help the beleaguered airlines boost revenues, since they
typically get a cut from such services.

Meanwhile, the old GTE Airfones that now often sit
ignored in the seat backs on airlines such as United and
Delta are getting substantial upgrades. Last month, Verizon,
which now owns GTE, started rolling out JetConnect on
carriers including Continental Airlines. The service allows
passengers to plug their laptops into the Airfones and play
games or send instant messages. Airfone plans to eventually
add high-speed e-mail to the mix.

JetConnect currently is priced at a flat fee of $5.99 for
the entire flight, which is notable given that Airfones have
long gone unused because of their stratospheric prices. A
typical Airfone call costs nearly $4 a minute.

The airlines are launching the services at a time of
widespread disregard for the airline rules that prohibit the
use of a range of gadgets, from cellphones to BlackBerries.
The Federal Communications Commission bans cellphone
use on airborne commercial flights. The FCC hasn’t banned
BlackBerries, but the Federal Aviation Administration
advises airlines not to allow them, either, lest the gizmos
interfere with a plane’s own electronic systems.

But many BlackBerry users — some so addicted to
instant e-mail gratification that they refer to the device as
“Crackberry” — check in with impunity while flying
because they know they usually won’t get caught. Many
have figured out that the machine can work quite well up in
the sky, even at cruising altitude. (One dirty little secret: It
may help to point it out the window.)

Cellphone use aloft isn’t uncommon either. Last Friday,
in fact, an afternoon flight on Southwest Airlines from
Houston to Dallas was forced to abort its landing twice and
return to Houston when the navigation equipment stopped
functioning properly. On a hunch, the pilot asked the flight
attendants to see if anyone had been using cellphones — and
found two.

The pilot made an announcement that the flight’s
problems were probably due to the cellphone use. However,
the airline didn’t attempt to have the two offending
passengers fined, according to a spokeswoman, because they
complied with the flight attendant’s request to shut them off.
“I’m an easy-going person when it comes to human
foibles, but there were several people on the plane who
wanted them arrested,” says Evelyn Biery, a Houston
bankruptcy lawyer who was on the flight.

Airlines and the government threaten fines of $1,100 for
breaking their rules. The penalty can jump to $25,000 for
people who argue about it and get into an altercation.
But enforcement is spotty at best. Flight attendants have
particular trouble telling whether a BlackBerry is set to
transmit — which is prohibited — or whether the user is
simply tapping out an e-mail and saving it to send later. It’s
“part of the huge dilemma we are beginning to face,” says a
United spokeswoman.

In fact, it’s often
fellow fliers, not flight
attendants, who sound the
alarm. Last year, Jason
Saul, a Chicago software
executive, was using his
BlackBerry as his United
flight was preparing to
take off. A nearby
passenger spotted him
and started yelling that he
would make the plane
crash. Ultimately, the flight was delayed slightly. “We want
to err on the side of safety and make absolutely sure that the
threat does not exist,” an airline spokesman said.
One reason the BlackBerry works pretty well up in the
air is that it needs only a short burst of time — a few
seconds or less — to collect a bunch of e-mails and send
some off. A cellphone, by contrast, needs to stay connected
for the entire length of the call.

There’s been little research to back up the airlines’
precautionary safety measures. A government study at the
University of Oklahoma (conducted by a group that’s partly
funded by the wireless industry) looked into whether
cellphones can interfere with some plane systems, and
concluded they don’t. However, separate research by U.K.
regulators tested two parked planes and found that
cellphones might cause interference.

John Sheehan
chaired a 1996 study that
examined gadgets such as
laptops and game players
on planes — but not
cellphones or e-mail
devices. While his study
found little likelihood that the devices will harm a plane, he
has no doubt that it could happen. Should airlines allow
people to use BlackBerries in the air? “Absolutely not,” he
says.
An official at BlackBerry’s parent company, Research
in Motion, says it encourages customers to follow airline
rules.

Boeing’s Connexion service uses satellites to send and
receive data from Web surfers onboard the aircraft.
Passengers will be able to plug their laptops directly into
seat-mounted jacks. Boeing claims the hookup will be
simple enough that anyone can do it. But just in case, the
first few flights on Lufthansa and British Airways will have
techies on board. “We hope — and the flight attendants
hope — that they will be left out of the service loop,” a
Connexion spokesman says.
Lufthansa will offer the service at first on a Boeing 747
running between Frankfurt and Washington, D.C. British
Airways plans trials a month later.

Boeing and the airlines are still working on the most
critical part of the puzzle — pricing. A Boeing official says
surveys suggest that travelers would be willing to pay $25 to
$35 for access on a flight of about seven hours.
The JetConnect services aren’t as technologically
sophisticated as Connexion yet. In fact, it isn’t a live Internet
connection, but a server on the aircraft that has news and
other information stored on it, which is updated every 15
minutes.

Copyright © 2002 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.

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