Ryanair passengers on most flights from Dublin can text and make calls on their mobile phones from today.
The airline launched what it claimed was Europe’s first fleet-wide inflight mobile phone service on 22 Ryanair planes this morning, and says it plans to extend the service to all of its 170-plus aircraft over the next 18 months.
Using your mobile phone onboard will cost significantly more than European roaming rates, at €2 to €3 per minute for a call. Sending text messages will cost about 50 cent but receiving texts will be free. The cost of sending an email on a Blackberry or other smart phone will be €1 to €2 while web browsing will cost about €10 to €15 per megabyte of data transferred.
Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary admitted the new service wasn’t cheap but predicted it would be used by millions of Ryanair customers. Charges would fall with time and increased usage, he also predicted.
“I think there is an enormous appetite for this. It will allow passengers to keep in touch with the office, family or friends and we expect demand to grow rapidly.” He said passengers were likely to used the service for urgent or important calls rather than “rubbish” texts, but added that it was their choice to decide whether to use their phones on board or not.
Ryanair is providing the new service in cooperation with OnAir, a Swiss-based technology outfit owned by two leading aviation companies, Airbus and SITA.
Mr O’Leary said Ryanair would take only a small proportion of revenues, which he declined to specify, from the service. This would help the airline further lower costs and reduce fares.
At present, only six passengers will be able to make calls at any one time, but this will increase to 12 by the end of the year. Phones will still have to be switched off at takeoff and landing for safety reasons but can be used at any other time during the flight. The service is an international one, using the 00 prefix.
In the past, mobile phones were banned on aircraft because they could connect to, or attempt to connect to, networks on the ground, thereby potentially creating interference and giving rise to high emissions.
The new system creates a local GSM cell network inside the aircraft, so minimising these problems. Benoit Debains, chief executive of OnAir, said the system was “totally safe” with emission levels less than 1 per cent of WHO limits.