Emirates Airlines has put phones on one of their Boeing 777-300s, which will enable passengers to make a phone call with their mobile, as well as send messages, during their flight. Patrick Brannelly, the Vice President of Passenger Communications and Visual Services for Emirates, said that travelers who book on their Boeing 777, which now has in-flight services for mobile phones, will be allowed to communicate with their business associates, friends, or family while they travel.

The aircraft that has this new system is operated on many of the routes that Emirates Airlines has, including their services to Australia and Europe. They first installed the phone service, which has been developed by AeroMobile, a technology developer for mobile phones, on one of their Airbus A340-300 planes in March, allowing the first authorized mobile phone calls in commercial air travel worldwide. Ever since, Emirates Airlines has installed the mobile phone technology on 10 of their aircrafts, which include A330-200s, A340-500s, A340-300s and, of course, the Boeing 777s. Their plans are to introduce the new in-flight phone system to other planes, while the maintenance division of the airline completes the work within 2 days.

Most of the calls made by passengers who use Emirates Airlines occur on flights during the day. The average amount of time that they are on the phone is about 2.5 minutes. Also, text messaging has proven to be very popular among their passengers. Bjorn-Taale Sandberg, the Chief Executive of AeroMobile, said that there has been an overwhelming amount of positive feedback from the service they launched in March, as 40% – 60% of the passengers have switched to using their phones on the flights.

Go to www.emirates.com to find out more.