Ryanair brings in-flight calling to 20 aircraft, but you'll never use it

Oh sure, the idea of having in-flight calling capabilities is pretty awesome, but actually biting the bullet and paying international roaming fees in order to indulge is likely to be a stretch. Ryanair, one of Europe's low-cost airlines, has finally equipped 20 of its planes (all traveling to / from Dublin) with in-flight mobile service after promising it around 1.5 years ago. Ryanair confesses that typical prices will be around €0.50 to send a text message and between €2.00 and €3.00 per minute to make and receive calls. In other words, you'll probably be keeping your conversations to yourself until you touch down, but at least it's there in case of emergency. Or something.

[Via Gadling, thanks Conrad]

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 21st 2009 11:18AM]

I dont understand why everyone is moaning about the cost of using their mobile on the flight...if you dont wanna pay DONT USE IT!! Its not rocket science.

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 22nd 2009 3:40PM]

Costs about as much as using Continental's satellite phone built into the VoD system by each seat. I guess the few benefits are that you get to use a real phone instead of a wierd TV remote-esque device, and you can send text messages. Will it support iDEN?

(Aparently not: The linked article reads "You can also catch up on email during the flight, from your smartphone (e.g. BlackBerry, iPhone, HTC) or from a laptop equipped with GPRS connectivity" - that means GSM).