Achieving a significant milestone in its growth, Emirates has become the first airline on the globe to offer the facility to use mobile phones aboard a flight in the routes to and from London. When the facility was launched last Thursday, the passengers aboard a service into Heathrow made not less than 30 calls as the Emirates Boeing 777 was flying into the London City from Dubai.

Back in the month of March, the airline started fitting a system enabling in-flight mobile usage in its aircrafts. At present, the service is made available on about 10% of the Emirates flights. Over and above, the service can be accessed only above 23,000 feet. It is necessary that the passengers need to keep their phones on silent throughout, while the crew can make the system text only or can turn it off anytime.

According to an Emirates spokesperson, about one in five passengers onboard made use of this facility making about 30 calls and forwarding and receiving about 100 text messages. The system called as AeroMobile system, which is capable of reducing the strength of phone signals to bare minimum so that it does not interfere with the equipments of the aircraft. Most interestingly, the airline has confirmed that it will not be charging the passengers for using a mobile onboard.

Patrick Brannelly, Emirates vice-president for passenger communications noted, "We have had no complaints or incidents. The cabin noise level on airliners is such that you cannot hear people making phone calls and the call quality has been so good there has been no need to shout.”