Flying Phones

Traditionally speaking, mobile phones and airlines don’t go particularly well together. Everyone who has flown is familiar with the request to ensure that all mobile telephones are turned off and will remain off from before take-off until you’re in the terminal building at the other end.

Now, however, things are changing, with RyanAir announcing that their customers can now use mobile phones on flights. Currently the service is limited, with users of the Vodafone network amongst the lucky few who are able to use their phone onboard (see the Vodafone site for more info and to browse their selection of mobiles, including the iPhone).

The technology to make the whole thing work is quite expensive, having cost somewhere between £100,000 and £900,000 to fit out just over 10% of RyanAir’s fleet, but further investment is likely in the near future.

Mobile phones being banned on planes is one of those things that few people have understood. After all, if you can really damage a multi-million pound plane with something that anyone can buy on the high street, what does that say about our safety? In fact, mobile phones are banned because when they are operating on planes they try to access the ground network, this means that they give off the greatest amount of radiation, at levels higher than is considered safe in an aeronautical environment.

The new technology involves installing an operating transmitter and receiver inside the plane itself. When the plane reaches cruising level the pilot can turn on this transmitter which carries signals directly from the plane to a satellite and then down to the ground. This means that the phones don’t have to work as hard to get a signal and keeps radiation levels down to an acceptable level.

At the moment, using your phone on a plane is rather expensive. It will cost 40p to send a text from 10,000ft (though nothing to receive) and between £1.50 and £3.00 a minute to make a call. You can even connect to the internet, but as this is going through a mobile phone network it is not very quick and costs between £1 and £2 to check emails. Whilst, certainly, the price will drop in the next few years, the expense of using your phone at such altitude may well serve to keep use to a minimum and reduce the possibility of irritating your fellow flyers. In the case of emergencies, however, it might turn out to be very useful.