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ot-Airlines set to install inflight e-mail

Mile-high Web access could help airlines boost revenues

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

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

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.
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