Oman Air Makes Aviation History
Oman Air Goes Live with Internet and Mobile OnAir
Date: 2 Mar 2010
Marking a pioneering milestone in the history of aviation, Oman Air became the first airline in the world to offer both mobile and broadband internet on board its flights. Offering in-flight connectivity is part of Oman Air’s ongoing drive to continuously enhance their customer travel experience and offer them innovative services commensurate with the latest technological developments.
Incorporating a cutting-edge most advanced technology that gives the instant convenience of connecting to the internet and mobile phone from the comfort of their seat, passengers travelling now onboard Oman Air’s A 330 flights will never be out of touch with the world even as they fly.
Barring the take off and landing time, passengers can use their mobile phones. As soon as the ‘no Mobile’ sign is off, the On-Air name will appear on the mobile screen as the network connection is obtained. The passengers can then receive and make calls, check their voice mail, send and receive text and multimedia messages, and access emails and websites, thus staying in touch during their flight as they would normally do on the ground.
When using their mobile phones on board, the services will be of a roaming nature, as on a foreign network. Users must then dial the full international numbers. Onboard communications will be charged by the home mobile service provider at international roaming rates, as is the case when one uses their mobile phone abroad.
With the Wi-Fi network access, logging onto the internet is like going online from any public Wi-Fi hotspot. The services that passengers can avail in this context are internet access, webmail to retrieve and send emails from a web-based email account, webchat to exchange instant messages.
The rates for the mobile and Internet connectivity are fixed as follows:
Passenger price plan for Internet on laptops (Wi-Fi), would be (pilot pricing) $29.95 for 26 MB per flight. Additional usage would be at $0.006 per KB, for the webmail (only body copy) would be at $9.95 and for the attachments it would be $.006 (per flight). For the Webchat the rate would be $4.95 for unlimited. (per flight)