A little less conversation: what's new with inflight phone use

Although - or perhaps because - I don't fly that often these days, I've been dreading the thought of cell-phone service becoming available on airlines. Internet connectivity - yes - just not cell phone yakka-yakka (or head-phoned Skypers VoIPeeing). There are so few places to escape having to hear people's cell phone conversations, I wasn't looking forward to the friendly skies becoming yet another 'can you hear me?' zone. (One thing about those in-flight telephones, they were sufficiently unavailable, expensive, and clunky to discourage much other than ultra quick calls.)

Let's face it, so many always-on folks sound as if they're projecting their voice, unmiked, to the back rows of the high school auditorium - or as if they're hollering into a juice can attached to another juice can with a piece of string.  And the only thing worse than hearing a full, boring conversation  is hearing half of one - given that you sit through the quiet parts dreading the point where the other party starts talking again. At least on party lines you got to hear both ends.

So who wants to sit next to some blatherer on a long-haul flight rant about her boyfriend, relay news about the big deal, or tell someone  'now we're over Newfoundland.'

But if the early studies are any indication, my fears about overuse of cell phones in flight are ungrounded.

According to an article in the August 9th Economist, Emirates airline and Air France has been offering service on a subset of their planes for a while now, and it seems that there's a little less conversation going on than I would have forecast.

On Emirates, calls were short (averaging 2 1/2 minutes); most took place during daytime flights; and most who used the service were text messaging. Air France, text messages from BlackBerries were the norm. Passengers polled want the service deployed on all flights.

By the way, those safety concerns about interfering with a plane's operations have apparently been overcome (although the take-off and landing prohibitions still stand). And if you think you're going to be able to just run up sky-minutes on your own calling plan, think again.  All calls go out through a router on the plane, so the airlines will be charging (with higher fees for voice calls than for text messages).

But unlike charges for water, peanuts, pillows, blankets, and carry-on bags, this is one charge that I suspect most of those who can't bear the thought of being unconnected for any length of time will be happy to pay.