By Prince Osuagwu

Ordinarily, the standard rule for passengers travelling in air planes is that mobile phones and other devices are permanently switched off until the flight touches down. Part of the reasons always given is that the mobile signals sometimes, have a way of jamming and incidentally disrupting the performance of the aircraft.

In fact, a study sometime, cited an electromagnetic instance, concluding that mobile phones used in the cabin could exceed the aircraft manufacturer’s rated allowable emission levels for some avionics.

However, in advancement to its series of onboard mobile services, Emirates Airline, at the weekend, broke the tradition with an introduction of mobile phone services on its A380 Aircraft.

Emirates announced that with the support of its connectivity partner, OnAir, passengers aboard its A380 aircraft will now be able to stay in touch via phone calls or through the mobile data link on their personal devices with their family, friends and colleagues while inflight.

The service, according to the airline is in addition to the OnAir WiFi service already available on Emirates A380 aircraft.

However, this is not the first time Emirates is coming up with such an inflight connectivity innovation. Since 1993 it has almost on yearly basis introduced one connectivity idea or the other on board.

In 1993 the airline equipped its entire Airbus fleet with in-flight phones. In1994, it added the in-flight fax machines in its entire Airbus fleet. Also in 2003, Emirates announced the introduction of live BBC text news headlines on its aircraft.

The airline in 2006 also deployed personal in-seat email and SMS services in all classes of its fleet.

Incidentally, the airline had introduced part of this service in 2008 when it announced that passengers can get onboard mobile telephone services and in 2011also launched Wi-Fi internet access on A380 in conjunction with OnAir.

The latest development seems to be a merger and improvement on the two services it introduced in 2008 and 2011 respectively.

According to the Vice President Corporate Communications Product, Publishing, Digital and Events at Emirates, Mr Patrick Brannelly,  the OnAir system allows passengers to use their own mobile phones to make and receive phone calls and text messages aboard the A380  aircraft, just as they would on the ground, using EDGE/GPRS connections from their service providers.

He said that Emirates first A380 aircraft equipped with the full suite of OnAir connectivity departed from Dubai international Airport to Munich International Airport last Tuesday and the first recorded inflight call was placed to China while the aircraft cruised at 11,500 metres flying across the Gulf.