PremEx

Apologies in advance for the cross-post, but as this news directly effects just a couple of U.S. Domestic airlines including Continental, I'm posting it here as many of you Continental flyers that are also Verizon Wireless cell phone owners might save a ton of money by signing up for this.

Synopsis: As low as 10 cents a minute with a monthly plan, 69 cents per minute with no commitment at all! And no connection fee on either! Regular Airfone is $3.99 per minute and $3.99 connection fee. Plus calls billed to your cell phone account and incoming calls to your cell routed to your seat in the sky.

http://www.flyertalk.com/travel/fttr...ML/000986.html

A monthly add-on plan for JetConnect service is also available.

sucker777

this is quite good; too bad i just switched to tmobile

mlbUMP

Sitting next to a CO non-rev yesteray on IAH/TPA. He placed numerous calls, so I inquired: "Doesn't that get a bit expensive?" He said that AirFone offers CO employees a rate of .29 per minute, with no plan fees or extra charges. Pretty good deal, huh? Then he asked "Wanna make a call?" He swiped his card and handed me the phone. I called in and got my schedule (usually call from the airport after arrival). Anyway, it was very nice of him to do that, but I wish I could get that same rate!

CALfly5

Verizon offers its employees a rate of $0.69/min with no connection fee. Not as good as CO employee rate, but pretty good.

Verizon launched the Airphone/VZ Wireless tie-in plan because Airphone (which Verizon owns) is tired of seeing their phones sit unused and wants to generate some money off a sunk cost investment (all the phones & transmission equipment) that have been installed and sit there generating little to no revenue.

Coolest thing to me about this new offering is that somebody who calls your cell will reach you while you are flying!

If you've never tried the JetConnect service, I encourage you to do so. Its a good deal at $5.99 for the ENTIRE FLIGHT (flat rate). I was "online" on a recent EWR-LAS flight for about 3-1/2 hours. I was IMing a couple of colleagues who were in the office, and a couple of my customers who were in their offices. I actually got some work done. You can get a free JetConnect session by registering with Verizon at: http://www22.verizon.com/airfone/jet.../jc_intro.html

JetConnect has an email option, which at $15.98 per flight, is just too expensive when you consider that emails above a puny 2kb are charged an additional 10 CENTS per kb!! A basic email with HTML in it (such as a hotel program update email) is generally sized at 25-50kb. That means a middle-of-the-road 30kb message would cost you a whopping $2.80 to view!!!!!!! C'mon, Verizon Airphone people - that's just too expensive; you could easily rack up a $50 or $100 charge checking your email on the JetConnect + email plan. (But JetConnect, by itself, at $5.99 for the whole flight is well worthwhile if you have people on the ground who you can IM with.)

I'm eagerly awaiting the day of full Internet access from the sky. Guess I should be flying LH, huh?

AAnxious

I feel so bad for you. Verizon is king in NYC. Signals in tunnels, signal everywhere, great reliable network. This airphone deal sounds great too.

hotlancer

Since when are you flying CO PreMx? You mean after I take your advice and switch from CO to NW (and qualify as a Plat for 2004-2005) you up and jump ship to CO?

You can't tell me it was the AirFone service........what gives?