Lufthansa Adds In-Flight Internet Access

Literally a higher demographic audience, 95% of passengers who tried Internet access aboard a Lufthansa airlines Boeing 747 liked this service. In mid-January, Lufthansa equipped its Boeing 747-400 Sachsen Anhalt, which regularly flies between Frankfurt and Washington, D.C., with Internet access received from a satellite signal and delivered via laptop PCs that the cabin crew loaned to passengers during flights.

Europemedia reports that a preliminary evaluation of a three-month trial of this service shows that an average of 50 to 80 passengers per flight used in-flight Internet access. Ninety-five percent of those passengers rated it as “good to excellent”. During the last days of the trial, Lufthansa received approval from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to provide wireless Internet access to passengers’ own laptop computers during flights. Beginning in mid-2004, Lufthansa plans to install these services on all of its Boeing 747-400 and Airbus A330 and A340 long-range aircraft.