Over 200,000 passengers have used Emirates' free onboard Wi-Fi since October this year, taking advantage of the airline's service to connect with family, friends or colleagues when they fly. On most Emirates A380s passengers can access 10MBs of free data, enough to send emails, blog, tweets, posts on Facebook, or browse the Internet.
Emirates currently offers Wi-Fi connectivity on 86 aircraft - on board all of its 56 Airbus A380s, as well as on 30 of its Boeing 777s. A comprehensive retrofit programme is also underway to install Wi-Fi capability across the rest of its fleet. On 51 of Emirates A380s, the first 10MB of data is free, and a token $1 charge is levied for the next 500MB. On all other aircraft, getting online costs $1 due to the current hardware and software installed.
Until 01 January 2015, proceeds from these connection charges will be donated to the Emirates Airline Foundation to help improve quality of life for disadvantaged children around the world. "Emirates sees in-flight Wi-Fi as an essential value-add service that should be freely available for our customers to connect with friends, family and business. At the moment, software and technical limitations mean that on some of our aircraft we still have to levy a token charge for Wi-Fi. We are working hard to overcome this but until then, it is only $1 to get online. We've been providing free Wi-Fi and $1 Wi-Fi on the fleet since early October and up to 35 percent of passengers are using the service, especially on long flights," said Patrick Brannelly, Emirates' VP for Corporate Communications - Product, Publishing, Digital and Events.-PR
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