Vietnam Airlines will provide wifi coverage on planes

Vietnam Airlines will begin providing wifi coverage on domestic and international flights next May, a representative of the airline said.

Vietnam Airlines may offer free wifi packages on domestic flights. Illustrative photo.

"According to the roadmap, we will start testing wifi coverage on domestic and international flights from May," Vietnam Airlines General Director Pham Ngoc Minh said last night (January 15).

According to Mr. Minh, the technical conditions are ready for testing wifi coverage.

After successful testing, the airline will provide mass coverage. With this coverage, passengers will be able to surf the web as comfortably on the plane as they would on the ground.

“Modern aircraft have allowed the use of this technology. In the near future, VNA will provide coverage on 30 modern A350 and Boeing 787 aircraft,” said a VNA representative.

General Director Pham Ngoc Minh said passengers will be able to use high-speed internet services, except for phone calls via free applications such as Viber, Zalo, etc. However, passengers using new iPhones can still make phone calls via FaceTime audio and video.

Regarding wifi fees, a senior representative of VNA said that the wifi package for international flights will only cost about 15-20 USD. Meanwhile, the wifi package for domestic flights “could be free,” according to Mr. Pham Ngoc Minh.

There are currently more than a dozen airlines in the world providing in-flight wifi service with prices ranging from 2.75 - 49.95 USD such as Air Canada, AirTran, Alaska Airlines, British Airways, American Airlines...

It is known that Vietnam Airlines will operate wifi service on Boeing 787 Dreamliner and Airbus A350 aircraft after Gogo synchronizes Inmarsat's new GX Aviation Ka-Band satellite system and their SwiftBroadband connection on Vietnam Airlines aircraft.

Vietnam Airlines also said that 8 B787-9 Dreamliners and 10 A350-900s that the airline ordered in advance according to plan will also be delivered in 2015 to put into operation wifi service.

Implementing wifi on planes requires a large technical infrastructure, and not all airlines have the resources to do this. Developing this service on planes brings great convenience to busy passengers and also brings a relatively large source of revenue to the economy, because according to researchers' estimates, without wifi on planes, the UK economy loses about 640 million pounds a year.

According to VTCNews