Emirates”s first B777-300 is now fully operational with the AeroMobile system, and as a result, passengers can now use their mobile phones to make voice calls and send SMS text messages. If you haven”t yet noticed, perhaps it means it was all a fuss about nothing.
The AeroMobile system was launched with Emirates in March, when it was installed on one of the airline”s Airbus A340-300 aircraft, and the roll out is continuing with currently 10 aircraft installed including A340-300, A340-500, A330-200 and the B777 aircraft. Installations are progressing during regular scheduled maintenance and now take less than two days to complete.
Patrick Brannelly, Emirates” vice president of passenger communications and visual services says: ”The nightmare scenarios of everyone jabbering away just aren”t happening,” There are only about five or six lines to begin with, so if they are all taken, you might have to wait a few minutes.”
Brannelly said on the first flight on which the system was available, 55 per cent of passengers turned on their phone once the on board announcement about the service had been made, and since then between 40 to 60 per cent of passengers have switched on their phones. The average length of calls is around 2.5 minutes.
”We”ve seen flights to Europe where we”ve had 40 or 50 calls during the flight, where using the old system of the phones in the seat we might have seen 10. And SMS has grown since it was a little clunky using the existing seat back system and that has risen to as high as 300 or 400 SMS messages per flight.”
One worry was passengers would keep other passengers awake during the night, but Brannelly says this has not happened.
”Every seat on every plane has had its own phone since 1996, so it”s a problem that doesn”t exist. There is no quiet zone on board because it would not be practical. What”s interesting is that on some night flights there have been no calls, but when we”ve looked at it, we can see that people are using the system to SMS rather than make voice calls. Social conditioning means people know how to behave: they don”t want to disturb others, and they don”t want to be overheard.”
Astonishingly, Emirates is not seeing the new service as another way of squeezing money out of passengers.
”We”ve stopped looking at it as a revenue earner and see it as a service,” says Brannelly. ”It is not a profit centre and not regarded as such. We do get a small percentage of the call revenue but we spend more on the equipment. It”s a commercial decision. If we had made a deal with an operator who put the system on board for free, they would have charged our passengers $12 a minute and no one would have used it.”
Instead, the cost is determined by the individual”s phone operator, and is treated as just another roaming agreement.
”Once you turn on your phone after take off the networks send you an SMS message telling you the cost.”
So why isn”t it on the new A380? ”The mobile phone system evolved over two years ago, but by then there was a design freeze on the A380 so it couldn”t be embodied, so it might be a few years before it appears on board.”
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Tom Otley