28 November 2005

By TOM PULLAR-STRECKER

Passengers flying to and from New Zealand could soon be able to check their e-mail and surf the Net using their in-seat TVs, thanks to a satellite that is due to be launched this week and work under way at Boeing.

About a dozen airlines including Singapore Airlines, Japan Airlines and Lufthansa already provide inflight broadband internet on some international routes using Connexion by Boeing.

The service – costing $US9.95 per hour or a flat fee of $US29.95 per flight – only lets passengers access the Net using their own notebook or handheld computers, but is now being integrated with airlines` inflight entertainment systems.

Air New Zealand spokesman David Jamieson says the ``patchy coverage`` of satellites capable of providing broadband internet to the South Pacific has been the main factor holding the airline back from introducing a service to date.

But that shouldn`t be an obstacle for long.

Seattle-based Boeing spokesman Terrance Scott says the company has negotiated capacity on a new satellite, AMC-23, that will let it offer Connexion to airlines in the region from next year, ``probably in the first or second quarter``.

AMC-23 was built by Alcatel for New Jersey-based SES Americom and is due to be launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Thursday by a Russian-built Proton rocket. The five-tonne satellite, positioned 172 degrees east of the Meridian, will have a footprint that stretches from California to Bangladesh and from Alaska to New Zealand, serving all points in between.

``It will give us adequate coverage of the routes that our customers fly down there``, says Mr Scott.

Connexion uses a metre-wide satellite dish mounted in the fuselage of each plane to send and receive data, which is distributed to passengers` seats using either an Ethernet local area network or an 802.11 Wi-Fi access point.

Mr Scott says planes can get up to a 20 megabit per second downstream connection and a 5Mbps upstream connection, but the standard offering is a 5Mbps/1Mbps link.

Air New Zealand`s manager of inflight entertainment and onboard revenue, Matthew Wood, says the service hasn`t yet taken off with passengers of overseas airlines.

But that may be about to change now Boeing is integrating the service with airlines` inflight entertainment systems, including the Rockwell Collins system that is now being installed on all Air New Zealand`s 747 and 777 aircraft.

Air New Zealand long-haul passengers could then access the internet using their in-seat TVs as their screens and their remote control or a plug-in keyboard as their input device – doing away with the need for them to bring their own computers.

``That would drive uptake considerably, away from laptop owners to `Jo Bloggs`,`` Mr Wood says.

Boeing`s Mr Scott says the integration work should be complete some time in 2006.

The aircraft maker is the only company providing inflight broadband at the moment.

A rival Swiss-based consortium called OnAir, which is backed by Airbus and technology company SITA, is about to launch a head-on competitor using three Inmarsat I-4 satellites and this could result in sharper deals for airlines such as Air New Zealand that have yet to commit.

OnAir will offer a Wi-Fi and in-seat service for both Airbus and Boeing fleets, but it won`t have satellite coverage of airspace in the Pacific till the last of the three satellites is put into orbit in 2007.

Airlines receive a share of the revenues from Boeing`s service, but must pay for the hardware and foot the bill for the extra fuel needed to carry the equipment and to compensate for the drag created by the satellite antenna.

Mr Wood says Air New Zealand will survey passengers early next year to assess demand for inflight broadband.

It wants to find out what passengers would be prepared to pay and whether they`d prefer to use their own computers or wait for a solution that was integrated with the airline`s inflight entertainment system.

``I expect most people will say, `if it`s in the seat then all the better`. We are watching the market, understanding how it is emerging, and clearly we need to talk to customers about what is important to them.``

Air New Zealand, after lagging other airlines in its inflight offerings, is up with its peers thanks to the Rockwell Collins systems. But Mr Jamieson says it`s too soon to say whether the carrier will be among the early adopters of inflight broadband, or whether it might find itself playing catch-up again.