No more waiting for switching on the phone after the plane has come to complete halt. If you are on a long haul flight and want to access email / internet, worry not.
Vijay Mallya owned Kingfisher Airline is offering the service to you. He knows what frequent fliers want, and has granted their wish.
Very recently, Kingfisher gave one of the biggest orders of 50 planes at Paris Air show. This order was placed keeping in mind Kingfisher’s plan to go International and have long haul flights to US.
 This is great news for busy executives, who now can do their work un-interrupted on long haul flights that some times exceed 15 hours of flying time.
This service is going to be provided by Kingfisher Airline in association with On-Air. Here are the details from the recent news.
OnAir announced this morning at Asian Aerospace in Hong Kong that the in-flight communications services will start to be introduced by Kingfisher in 2008, and that by 2009 passengers will be able to use the Internet while in-flight, as well as send and receive emails and make and receive calls on their own mobile devices.
The services will initially be offered on five Airbus A330s and five Airbus A340-500s. OnAir says the airline plans to eventually have the system on all its long-range aircraft. The carrier also has Airbus A350s and A380s on order.
Kingfisher is the first Indian carrier to sign with OnAir, which is a joint venture between Airbus and SITA. Its services are based on an onboard server connected to ground through Inmarsat’s broadband satellite infrastructure, SwiftBroadband
With this announcement Kingfisher has solved a big problem I am sure the investment it has done will pay off handsomely.
I will not be surprised if other airline follow suite.
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Indeed Mallya is going aggressively to race ahead. To add up, recently there also were reports on Kingfisher toped the list in e-ticketing: http://www.business-standard.com/economy/storypage.php?leftnm=3&subLeft=1&chklogin=N&autono=296064&tab=r
and last year had signed up with DishTV to introduce Live TV on flight: http://www.businesswireindia.com/PressRelease.asp?b2mid=11467
Any idea about the experience on the TV entertainment on Kingfisher flight those who may have travelled?
2008 and 2009 ! Well, thatz some time for others to catch up. I like KF experience..Itz definitely working on customer experience management, something that others have been ignoring. I guess they will slowly start charging a premium for it.
Thanks Ashwin for letting me know about this news…
@Indian Blogger…Kingfisher knows the pulse of market….they know what the user wants and gives it to them…Look at the strategy too…they will get the flyers used to their service and then start charging premium…which is excellent strategy for growth….
Wow kingfisher is surely making progress …. where is Jet ??
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