March 28, 2006 – INFLIGHT television system provider LiveTV is studying the possibility of offering email and Internet access, according to British magazine Airline Business.

LiveTV sales and marketing manager Scott Easterling says the company is developing system upgrade options, including passenger Internet and email to seatback screens or personal laptops. The Florida-based company already has some experience of data delivery through its WiFi-based Airline.link, used post-landing by JetBlue and Frontier Airlines to pass operational data and IFE updates between aircraft and LiveTV operations centres at main operating bases.

An Internet capability would be welcomed by Frontier, which is studying inflight WiFi connectivity for passenger laptops. The airline currently charges passengers $5 per flight for LiveTV’s inflight television service and reports that it has proved most successful on stage lengths of over two hours. The carrier’s maximum stage length is around five hours.

Another LiveTV customer, Australian budget airline Virgin Blue, has announced that it plans to roll out the service across its whole fleet and on all routes from the third quarter of the year and says it will charge for usage.

Potential customers include India’s Jet Airways. “We are looking closely at offering live television on domestic and international services,” says VP customer services and inflight Rajesh Verma. “On domestic services in India, which are typically from 40min to 2.5hr in duration, the ability to offer live television is very attractive. In less than a year we will have live TV fitted on our new aircraft deliveries and then we will retrofit it into the current fleet. The idea is to give more and more service on board – we’re not looking to earn revenue out of it.”

Jet Airways is talking to potential suppliers about a system capable of handling live TV, Internet access and the use of mobile phones.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------