Hello, Up There - Virgin Atlantic Airways introduces service that lets air passengers receive calls made to their cell-phone numbers - Brief Article

Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, Nov, 2000 by Lynn Woods

TRAVEL -- With a new IN-FLIGHT PHONE SYSTEM, someone on the ground can reach out and touch you at 40,000 feet.

YOU KNOW the drill: Your cell phone is off-limits once an airplane pushes away from the gate. But now Virgin Atlantic Airways is letting passengers receive calls made to their cell-phone numbers in flight.

To activate the service, cell-phone users swipe a special card from their service provider through the aircraft in-seat phone unit when they board the plane. When a call is made to your cell phone, there's a low ringing in the headset you use to listen to movies and a message appears on the seat-back video monitor. To answer the call, you pick up the in-seat handset (which, unlike personal cell phones, is designed not to interfere with aircraft navigation systems). Passengers pay a lofty $9 per minute, and callers pay standard land fees.

Virgin launched the service last July in Europe, where most wireless phones use GSM digital cellular technology, which is a pre-requisite for the service to work. GSM phone networks, such as VoiceStream Wireless, are becoming more common in the U.S., and later this year Virgin will introduce the service six of its 747-400s that, on fly between London and the U.S.

In 2002 Virgin plans to follow up with perhaps the most sought-after amenity for business travelers: in-flight Internet access available through the seat-back monitor.

Right now, logging on to the Internet aboard a plane "is expensive, takes ages, and the link keeps breaking," says David Tharp, Virgin Atlantic's director of in-flight entertainment development. The airline plans to solve the problem by expanding the available bandwidth.

Meanwhile, Singapore Airlines will test its own in-flight Web access in November.