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Wednesday, July 25, 2007


Qantas to offer Web access in the Air


Qantas says its new Airbus A380 planes will offer passengers both wireless internet access and laptop power sockets in every seat, including economy.

USB ports, also built into every seat, will potentially allow passengers to access multimedia content from music players and portable hard drives through the seat-back screens.

The high-tech features are part of Qantas's new inflight entertainment system, to be installed on each of the airline's 20 A380 planes.

The airline said it would also upgrade its existing 747-400 international fleet with "premium economy" cabins, with each seat offering laptop power sockets.

Qantas expects to have the A380 fleet in operation from August next year; a spokesman said the planes would first fly the Melbourne-Los Angeles and Sydney-Los Angeles routes, before being offered on other routes "as the aircraft come online".

The 747-400 planes retrofitted with premium economy cabins will fly to London, Hong Kong and Johannesburg from February next year, and Qantas said it would add more routes once the A380 planes were introduced.

John Borghetti, Qantas's executive general manager, said the new A380 entertainment system would, in addition to internet access, feature wide-screen monitors in all cabins and a selection of 100 on-demand movies, 350 television shows, 500 audio CDs and 30 "PC style" games.

Further, the system would offer "online duty free shopping" and all seats would have built-in USB ports.

The Qantas spokesman would only say the USB ports were for "viewing of content on the IFE [inflight entertainment] screens and charging", and would not say whether they could be used for connecting the entertainment system to MP3 players like the iPod.

"There has never been anything like this onboard a commercial aircraft," said Borghetti.

Passengers could access the internet and email using a laptop computer or through the seat-back entertainment system. Laptops without wireless connectivity could plug into the network using a regular networking cable.

Qantas said it had not yet been decided whether the airline would charge extra for internet access or offer it for free.

.. from smh

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