TAAG Angola Airlines has become OnAir’s first Sub-Saharan African customer – line fitting its new B777-300ER fleet with Internet OnAir and Mobile OnAir. The airline will use Thales’ TopConnect to access OnAir’s inflight Wi-Fi and mobile phone services on its new fleet, to be delivered from May 2014. OnAir offers a consistent, reliable service across Africa and all the routes the airline flies, thanks to the widest-reaching network of regulatory approvals and the largest and most geographically diverse number of roaming agreements of any provider. With authorizations from over 100 countries and more than 375 roaming agreements, OnAir provides consistent coverage on all the major routes across the world. In addition, OnAir uses Inmarsat’s SwiftBroadBand satellite network, the only network to provide worldwide coverage.
“TAAG is an ambitious airline, leading the modernization of air transport in Angola,” said Captain Lourenço Manuel Gomes Neto, Executive Vice President Operations of TAAG Angola Airlines. “OnAir connectivity, in the form of inflight Wi-Fi and GSM, gives our passengers the freedom to stay in touch with the world outside the aircraft, strongly enhancing their experience. The worldwide service reliability is particularly important, given the routes we fly across from and across Africa.” Passengers flying on TAAG Angola’s B777-300ER will experience the full benefits of OnAir connectivity. The inflight Wi-Fi solution, Internet OnAir, enables passengers to email, update their social media, and browse news sites. Like a Wi-Fi hotspot on the ground, passengers only need to log on and their enter credit card details before they are free to surf the Internet.
Passengers can also use OnAir’s inflight GSM product, Mobile OnAir, to email, text, talk, and use their mobile apps as they please. Charges are included in the user’s monthly phone bill, exactly like using international roaming. “This new deal with TAAG Angola Airlines shows that cabin connectivity is now a truly global market,” said Ian Dawkins, CEO of OnAir. “We are in the strongest position to make inflight connectivity a truly worldwide phenomenon, given the breadth and depth of our regulatory and roaming agreement networks. On top of SwiftBroadband’s consistency across the world, this means we can offer an un-compromised service to all airlines, wherever they might be.”
Source: OnAir
