Lufthansa on Friday
confirmed it is on track to relaunch its FlyNet inflight Internet system on the
North Atlantic this year, with stress tests underway on six planes and a total
of 60 aircraft already outfitted with antennas.
Advancing
its plans announced last October to become the launch customer of Panasonic's
new exConnect service, the German-based carrier earlier this decade was among
the first carriers to offer inflight broadband, but by the end of 2006 withdrew
the service when Boeing scrapped its Connexion product.
"We can use a huge
portion of those antennas which we have installed for the former system, so our
rollout pace will be incredibly fast," Lufthansa vice president the
Americas Jens Bischof said on Friday. "Besides the minor adaptations with
this antenna system, we can basically use the existing infrastructure, and we
have already 60 airplanes—long-haul, intercontinental airplanes—equipped with
those antennas. As soon as we go into the routine, we can roll it out
significantly faster than anybody else who could possibly be on the market—but
there is no other airline providing that service."
Bischof said Lufthansa is
"in the final stages" of testing bandwidth and data load. "The
usability and the functionality of the system is already tested, and has
already passed. Now, we're in the heavy-duty tests, stress testing and so on.
The final test phase will now involve customers," he said. The carrier
noted that it eventually plans to roll out the system to its entire long-haul
fleet.
The new service will extend
not just to computers, but also will be compatible with smartphones, Bischof
said, though Lufthansa does not plan to allow inflight phone calls. The carrier has yet to
disclose pricing for the service.