iriefrank

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/23/te...d-airfone.html

"Airfone, which Verizon acquired when it bought GTE in 2000, has phones in about 1,000 planes operated by Continental, Delta, United Airlines and US Airways. The company will work with the airlines to figure out how to remove the phones and other equipment from the planes."

Xyzzy

If they charged a more reasonable price per minute they'd have more customers. I have no idea what the cost of operation is, but they should have been able to ammortise the equipment already...

iriefrank

I found the rates for VZW users to be quite reasonable, thus the sad face.

RatherBeSailing

And after months of intense research and discussion, they will come up with a sticker that says "Non-operational".

ContinentalFan

LOL. They'd have to file the patent first. I didn't think much of those phones. I always felt that they were too expensive. I seldom saw people use them. I wonder how they did the market research on them.

Xyzzy

Sure -- but for the rest of us a $3.99 connection charge and $4.99/minute is outrageous. The rates are posted here. I recall using these in the GTE days and the per minute fees were a lot at about half of the current rates.

entropy

I did see a lawyer on EWR-ATL yakking on that think the whole flight....

Something more reasonable on the order of $1 a minute would have been OK. When you're up to $8 out of the gate its just ridiculous, its not like the traffic itself actually costs anything.

I was staying at the westin in SF once and they showed the charge for a 4 minute phone call to japan, with all surcharges, to be about $80. people must be insane to do that.

Anglo Large Clawed Otter

I used the damn thing once in 10 years. I was terribly drunk somewhere near Greenland, was having no luck sleeping in a coach seat, and decided to rouse my Flatmate in Edinburgh (at roughly 3am local time) to ensure he arrived at the airport with my bottle of Balvenie, so I could stave off impending hangover. He was most pleased.

OutOfOffice

I used one once on a USair flight in 1991. I'll miss staring at those phones during prolonged periods of extreme boredom.

HeathrowGuy

Wow - hope nothing s/he said (or carried onboard) was hitherto privileged, if s/he is a litigator...

kingalien

Aw heck, now I won't be able to see how the stock market is doing anymore?

So will removing the equipment shave more weight off of each plane? Bring back the magazines?

entropy

at least it wasn't on Air France!

N9MD

Oh, come on now! If we didn't have the ban on Cellular phones for the totally unfounded excuse of possible "interference" with aircraft communication and navigation equipment, each of us could simply pick up our Cell Phone and, for most of us, talk endlessly without using up our monthly minutes.

Of course, I don't advocate the use of any phones inflight because of the "annoyance" factor. Just think of how thrilled the other passengers must have been listening to a lawyer "shouting" in the VZW phone while in the air --- probably regaling fellow travelers with habeus corpus, nolo contendre, and res ipso loquitor. (That's all I remember from three years of Latin in the late 1950s --- and I am not a lawyer.)

Xyzzy

I recall using the GTE phones quite a lot in the 1990-1994 time frame, before cellphones became ubiquitous. It was about the same price (or less) for me to use the AirFone for a minute or two to call someone regarding a flight delay as it was to use my cellphone, (when on the ground) what with the cellular roaming rates and daily roaming fees.

I also recall learning how to access the phone when 50 others wanted to do so at the same time (full plane, long delay announced). Since there were only a few air to ground channels, a green "swipe card" light would go on when one became free. While others would see the light, pull out their credit card, swipe, and get denied, I had the card at the ready in the slot. As soon as the light turned green I swiped the card It was something like $1.99 setup and $1.99/minute. Actually, I found the old rate info from September, 1989:Those were the days...


I think they'd have a lot more customers now if they'd have kept the rates the same. My guess is that Verizon was trying to get people to convert their cellphones over to take advantage of the subscriber rates. It sounds to me as if that attempt was a miserable failure.

WIRunner

currently verizon customers pay 69c per minute with no plan and i believe 10c per minute with a $6 monthly package.