Use Your Mobile In-Flight with Air France

For the first time ever, passengers will be able to use their own mobile phones during flights.

Air France will start a six-month trial for passengers to use their mobile phones to make calls and send emails and text messages during flights from July this year.

The company was a bout to launch the in-flight mobile service last month but has been forced to delay it until the summer due to regulatory certification for the on-board equipment taking longer than expected.
The service will only be installed on one of the smallest planes in the company fleet, the A318 Airbus short-haul aircraft -.

For the first three months passengers will only be able to use the connectivity for data services, such as text messaging or sending emails from a BlackBerry or other device. For the last half of the trial passengers will also be able to use the voice service. This will be the first time anywhere in the world airline passengers will be allowed to make phone calls from their own mobile during a flight.

We believe that in flight phone calls will be annoying for some passengers but Air France said it is aware of the potential annoyance of in-flight mobile phone conversations and so, at the end of each flight during the trial, passengers will be given a questionnaire for feedback on the service.

An Air France spokeswoman told silicon.com: “After six months we will make our decision for the entire fleet.”