Air France Will Allow Mobile Phone Use During Flights

You know the drill: every time you get in an airplane, you must stop using your cell-phone. For a while, there have been rumors about the possibilities of allowing the passengers to use their handsets during flights.

With the changes that AirFrance made, their passengers will be able to send text messages and e-mails. In every plane of the Air France company, there will be placed some "no phones" signs. Functioning on the same bases as the "fasted seatbelt", the passengers will be notified when they can start using their mobiles.

Even so, the idea of allowing phone calls during flights is not something that everybody likes to hear. After a survey, the results showed that many people opposed strongly against the idea, while others saw this as an opportunity to browse the Internet, make some important phone calls and so on.

Until now, everything has been a big test. During six months of the year (from April until December), an Airbus A318 "equipped" with the service has done some commercial tests with the European-developed GSM mobile phone standard. Now that everything went well, the flights that will first allow this procedure will be those making short flights in Europe, or those taking North African destinations.

Ruediger Fuchs, an Airbus executive, said: "We expect this to be the first of many line-and retrofit aircraft, enabling airlines to respond to growing passenger demand to communicate on board."

"We will give a questionnaire to every passenger to see what they think before we make a decision to equip more aircraft. If people say they want data but no calls, that will not be a problem", added Marina Tymen of Air France.

But, this is not an experiment that has a first try. During the last week, JetBlue - low-cost carrier with a New York base - has launched a free, but limited Wi-Fi data service on one of their Airbus A320 aircrafts. JetBlue signed a partnership with Yahoo! and Research in Motion - the maker of the BlackBerry, that will allow the passengers taking that flight to use the Wi-Fi-enabled laptops for sending e-mails.