Last INQpressions Connexion by Boeing
IN THE PAST SEVERAL years, your devoted INQster used Connexion by Boeing service almost every time I came onboard an airplane. Whenever I was flying to Hong Kong, Melbourne, Johannesburg or San Francisco, the opportunity to do something else than watching in-flight entertainment has been too tempting.
This service was expanded this spring with ability to watch TV channels, albeit a selected ones. You can now watch BBC World, CNBC, MSNBC, EuroNews and Eurosport. Note that Ted Turner's News Network isn't in the list. Basically, the once we put all trademarks away, this service essentially an extension of the satellite service that was previously used only for in-flight phone calls, at rates that were even not affordable to people in front of the plane.
Lufthansa's FlyNet service besides "payware" offers a free internet portal which gives you latest news in politics, business, in-flight shopping and so on. Overall, you have around 20-40 minutes of content. If you decide to read pretty much everything, it will take keep you occupied for around an hour of flight. For a freebie, not too shabby at all.
We have benchmarked the service using the following rig:
Manufacturer: Airbus
Model: A340-600
Length: 75.3 m
Wingspan: 63.5 m
Cruising/measured speed: 890/982 kph
Max./measured altitude: 12,500/11,852 m
And with the Samsung Q30plus, using an Intel Pentium M 735 ULV, 512MB DDR-II 533 MHz, 32 GB SSD Flash drive, Intel Integrated Graphics (GMA900 - codename "slow as a dog"), 12.1-inch TFT LCD screen, res. 1280x768, six-cell battery decl. 2400 mAh
Since the battery life lasts for six hours once Wi-Fi is activated, that was the approx. time of testing. Signup for the service was very easy and once you registered, you can use the account in future. If you don't get a coupon, you need to sign in for the service and pay according amount of money - from 10 dollars for an hour to 26 for the whole flight.
Down point of FlyNet is the fact that the service isn't free even for business class or first class passengers, which is something we feel Lufthansa (and every other carrier offering the service) should have worked on since day one. The difference in price between economy and business class just does not add up for the added leg room. We're pretty much sure no one would sneeze if the price of business class ticket would be higher by 10 or 20 dollars, just to offer "free internet" to highly paying customers.
The download speed was beyond expectation, since we managed to get 54.7 KB/s while downloading selected software. Talking via Skype is zero problems in an Airbus A340-600, but is pretty problematic if you're travelling in an oldie 747-400 which wasn't even close to ideal circumstances. Virgin Radio (on-line radio) works just as fine. In World of Wacraft, latency averaged around 820 to 950, which wasn't bad - I measured the latency above Greenland, around middle of pond we usually call Atlantic Ocean. Last year, latency for European servers from Xian in China was approx. 890ms, so we can say that this is actually pretty good and in accordance to situation 11 km below the plane, couple of thousand km from server location (Paris, Europe).
During our several hours of testing, I've only had four or five congestion points, where probably more than 30 users that were trying to load content-heavy web-sites. However, that is pretty much normal for any satellite connection, since the bandwidth is shared.
End of the road
Overall, I would say that Connexion by Boeing really got better since last year, and the addition of TV programmes is really nice. However, for the price of $26 dollars for a flat-fee flight, I would really like to see some documentary and sports channels. Sadly, Boeing has announced that it's going to cancel the service, as we reported earlier this year, so it is up to the airline companies to continue to pay for this service. Another opportunity beckons for manufacturers such as Intel, which are advertising their tech on Connexion site. Now, is it just me, but is the world going in reverse? First, supersonic flights are thing of the past, now Boeing ditching the net connection - my great grandfather - a daily newspaper pioneer must be turning in his grave. What now, boat trips instead of planes?
The INQuirer
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