Oman Air goes live with internet and mobile phone connectivity
Oman Air has become the first airline to offer both mobile phone connectivity and broadband internet on board. The OnAir connectivity services are based on Inmarsat SwiftBroadband. At this stage, the service is in operation aboard one of Oman Air’s new A330 aircraft on the Muscat International to London Heathrow route, with planned extensions to other Oman Air aircraft.
The mobile phone service is offered on a ‘roaming’ basis, so onboard communications will be charged by the home mobile service provider at international roaming rates, as is the case when one uses a mobile phone abroad. With the WiFi network access, passengers can access the internet, retrieve and send emails from a web-based email account and access webchat to exchange instant messages. The passenger price plan for internet access on laptops (WiFi) is expected to be US$29.95 for 26MB per flight. Additional usage would be at US$0.006 per KB. For webmail (body copy only) the rate would be US$9.95 per flight and US$0.006 for attachments. For webchat the rate would be US$4.95 for unlimited use, per flight.
In other news, Oman Air has awarded a US$2.6 million contract to Dubai-based Spatial Composite Solutions for two new Cabin Crew Safety Trainers. Under the contract, Spatial Composite Solutions will design and build A330-300 and B737 NG Emergency Evacuation Trainers. These will be installed at Oman Air’s new Aviation Crew Training facility at Muscat International Airport. Delivery is scheduled for October 2010.
Designed to create a realistic cabin environment for safety training procedures, Emergency Evacuation Trainers (CEETs) are custom-made to replicate Oman Air’s A330 and B737 cabin layouts, incorporating flight deck, fully operational doors and evacuation slides. Built using fire-retardant composite build technology, these devices are equipped with smoke and fire simulation, decompression and sound effects. Operation systems simulate emergency scenarios in both the passenger cabin and flight deck and can either be manually activated for on-the-spot emergency scenarios, or pre-programmed on a touch-screen computer.
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