Many a person induced to fly because of cheap airplane tickets and cheap vacation packages is sometimes frustrated by not being able to make or receive important calls while flying. Virgin Atlantic has announced that it will allow passengers to make calls using their own cellphones so long as they are flying on the airlines new Airbus A330 between London and New York.
Plans call for the service to be expanded to as many as 20 Virgin Atlantic planes by the end of the year.
Cell phone users will be required to turn off their phones during take-off and landing and to comply with American law, phones will have to be turned off within 250 miles of U.S. airspace. Cell phone calls in flight will cost approximately the same as an international roaming call (around $1.60 per minute) and require an O2 or Vodafone compatible handset.
Passengers will be also able to send and receive text messages and browse the web (albeit very slowly) using AeroMobiles GPRS data.
This new service has been made possible by a $161 million upgrade to the Airbus A330 which comes with a new upper class cabin, more sensitive touchscreens for in flight entertainment, and USB ports for charging devices.
Due to limited bandwidth, only 10 people will be able to make calls at the same time, according to Virgin Atlantic.
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