Airline authorities are considering allowing the use of mobile phones in airplanes while they are in-flight. The annoyance of having someone hold a phone conversation beside you at 10,000 feet - “What? I can’t hear you, you’re breaking up! Try walking outside!” - is bad enough that I hope airlines will consider creating a private space for mobiles, or restricting the use to just that of data. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines already has plans to offer passengers onboard SMS and e-mail service from February 2005, which I think is a far more sensible way to go.

However, if airlines are allowed to let their customers use mobiles, and decide to do so, will they offer any services to those customers? A few fairly obvious ones spring to mind - providing details on the in-flight duty free cart or perhaps offering duty free mobile content, special deals on future flights and the ability for fliers check their connections in the air, and providing access to frequent flier accounts are all things that a traveller might remember to do when sitting still for a couple of hours after rushing around preparing for the journey. Personally, I like the idea of information services for stop-overs during long international flights. Despite organizing long and complicated trips many people fail to plan what to do during the several hours-long stopover halfway there. So an airline could offer a premium MMS service giving some ideas of what to do during the 13 hour stopover in San Francisco (using a recent personal example). This would include directions to the BART transport system and how to use it, details of where to catch the cable cars to Fisherman’s Wharf and maps containing the location of tourist information and decent places to eat (which I found would invariably offer doughnuts/donuts). They could even work out special rates with local tourist attractions… I’m sure there are other possible applications.