More Chinese airlines start wireless Internet trial on planes

Li Qian, a newspaper editor in his 30s, was recently able to enjoy Wi-Fi service for the first time ever while flying.

He experienced this on a flight from Los Angeles to Washington D.C. with United Airlines in the US, when he found that he could send messages on Wechat, an instant messaging service, to his friends with his mobile phone.

The price was only $1 for one hour of usage and could be charged to one's credit card in advance.

"It is not boring anymore to fly when you have Wi-Fi service," Li told the Global Times.

Wi-Fi service in the air is quite common for passengers on overseas airlines, but rare for travelers in China. This situation will hopefully be changing, with developments such as last week, when another State-owned airline ran trial flights with Wi-Fi service.

China Eastern trial

Under a test operation, about 80 passengers were invited to use China's first onboard Wi-Fi service provided by a telecommunications satellite on China Eastern Airlines flight MU5180 between Shanghai and Beijing on July 23.

So far, all three State-owned airlines have now started Wi-Fi trials.

In July 2013, Air China launched several Wi-Fi experiments on board with Inmarsat aeronautical satellite communications solutions based on the L-Band satellite communications system. The airline also ran an experiment using 4G technology from China Mobile this April.

In a note sent to the Global Times Thursday, China Southern Airlines said it is providing trial Wi-Fi service on some planes from Beijing to Guangzhou between July and September.

According to a report released by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) in June this year, the aviation industry transported 353.97 million passengers in 2013, up 10.8 percent from the previous year, which means a big potential market for in-flight Wi-Fi service.

Overseas booming

As early as 2005, the Boeing Company developed the Connexion system for Wi-Fi service on board planes.

In an annual survey released this month, Honeywell Aerospace found that in-flight Wi-Fi is becoming an increasingly influential factor for many passengers when making flight purchases.

The survey found that in-flight Wi-Fi availability influences flight selection for 66 percent of passengers. And nearly one in four (22 percent) admitted that they had paid more for a flight with Wi-Fi, and close to one in five (17 percent) have switched from their preferred airline because another carrier had better Wi-Fi offerings.

Also, about 37 percent of the respondents said they would be upset if they didn't have Wi-Fi access on their next flight, which is about the same amount as those (35 percent) who would be disappointed about not having food or drinks available for purchase.

Lufthansa charges 9 euros ($12.05) for two hours or 15 euros for 24 hours before the end of August this year, and the service has covered most of its airlines, according to a note sent to the Global Times Wednesday.

Guangzhou-based Yangcheng Evening News reported in July that the yearly revenue from in-flight Wi-Fi service is predicted to reach $1.5 billion annually in 2015, citing figures from market research company In-Stat.

Starting up in China

On China Eastern's test flight, the passengers were only allowed to use iPads and laptops, but not mobile phones, to surf the Internet with the Wi-Fi service.

Compared with the booming of Wi-Fi service abroad, the service in China is still at the start-up stage, and has not yet been put into mass commercial usage.

For Wi-Fi at high altitudes, there are two mainstream technologies: one is using telecommunication satellites to transfer signals and another is using ground stations to maintain ground-to-air connections.

In terms of technology, how to maintain the connection speed and stability is the problem, rather than the Wi-Fi coverage.

Normally, both satellite communication and 4G air network can reach a maximum speed of 30 megabits per second. But since the bandwidth is shared, speeds will decrease when the number of users increases.

Yang Qing, one of the testers who flew on China Eastern's Wi-Fi trial flight, told the Global Times Wednesday that the speed of the Wi-Fi lagged when more than 100 passengers surfed the Internet, and the service shut down whenever the plane flew through clouds or experienced bumpy turbulence.

However, China Eastern said the company will conduct a commercial test for its international routes, and is expected to launch the Wi-Fi service in October this year, pending approval from the CAAC.