Europe gives airlines green-light for in-flight cell phone calls!
By Will Park on Tuesday, June 19th, 2007 at 2:27 PM PST In Announcements, Services, Technologies
The European Aviation Safety Authority (EASA) has green-lighted the use of mobile phones from airborne planes. According to Cellular-News, the EASA has made a landmark move in allowing European airline passengers to make cellular calls while in the air. OnAir is on-board (you see what we did there?) to provide the wireless calling system, in conjunction with Airbus, SITA (an industry information technology body), and Inmarsat (a UK satellite communications company).
The first implementation will be on Air France’s Airbus A318 aircraft - with Portugal’s TAP and the UK’s bmi set to test the system before a fleet-wide roll-out. Ryanair is also planning to roll-out the system on it’s fleet of Boeing 737 aircraft.
It’s really too bad that the FAA can’t seem to see it the same way as the EASA. We were all pretty disappointed when the FAA essentially knocked in-flight cellular calling right out of the sky. Still, if Europe can do it, we still have hope for the US. We might be able to hold out with in-flight texting and WiFi.
[Via: Cellular-News]
Personally, I see this as a major annoyance. The last thing I want is someone next to me yappin’ the entire flight… screaming babies are bad enough.
I’ll trade the crying and yelling children for an annoying yuppie yakking it up on their cell phone.
At least we can use our data plans while shooting a dirty look over at that cell phone talker every once in a while.