If you’re an old friend of our blog, you may remember our chief editor Mr.Lu cheered on his post when AirChina developed an in-flight service for travelers to e-chat with each other on a plane in 2011.
Now the in-flight Wi-Fi finally comes.Yesterday afternoon, on the AirChina Flightca4108 to Chengdu, the Director-General Administration of Civil Aviation of China sent greetings to netizens via the AirChina’s official Weibo account. This is the first of its kind from a Chinese Airplane with Wi-Fi service, from an altitude of 10,000 meters. It’s been the first airline offering satellite-based Wi-Fi service in flight in China.
According to a representative from AirChina, there’s been only one airplane with in-flight Wi-Fi put into service and the flight route remains undecided. It is reported that a handful of more AirChina aircrafts have been capable of it.
The passengers in flight could be able to communicate with others on various social networking platforms, deal with e-mails and do other searching such as flights checking with Wi-Fi service. All they need to do is to login into the specific website via mobile tablets or laptops. But cell phone is still not allowed during the entire air journey.
Another thing people concerned about is the charge of in-flight Wi-Fi which is currently offered for free. It is expected that more valued-added services will be developed later.
As airlines in other countries have been offering in-flight Wi-Fi service, Chinese airlines have been trying to . Both China Eastern and Hainan Airlines tested in-flight Wi-Fi last year.