Satnews Daily
November 20th, 2012

OnAir + Qatar Airways... Airborne Hotspots (Comms)


[SatNews] Passengers on last Wednesday’s historic first flight of...

...Qatar AirwaysBoeing 787 Dreamliner sent text messages, emailed, tweeted, updated social media accounts and used the Internet throughout the journey. The plane is the first B787 with inflight connectivity. It is provided by OnAir, delivering both Wi-Fi Internet and mobile phone access to passengers. There were nearly 100 passengers on the 13 hour flight from Seattle to Doha. There were more than 50 Internet sessions, using a total of 1,250MB of data, with the average usage per session being around 22MB. The mobile phone network was used by nearly 75 phones. 340 text messages were sent and nearly 50MB of mobile data was used.


Comments from passengers were very positive and many of them enjoyed live tweeting throughout the flight, particularly sending pictures of the meals and the aurora borealis. Mobile OnAir has already been in operation on Qatar’s A320 fleet for three years, enabling passengers to use their mobile phones and smartphones on flights in Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Qatar’s Dreamliner will enter commercial service on Tuesday, November 20th. Qatar Airways has 60 B787s on order, all of which will be equipped with OnAir connectivity.