A large majority of travellers would rather mobile phone use were not permitted on planes, a new survey has revealed.
According to a poll by travel search site Skyscanner, an overwhelming 86% of respondents said in-flight mobile phone use would be “annoying” and only 1% said they would pay more to fly with an airline that offered mobile calls.
The result follows the recent move by Virgin Atlantic to allow mobile phone calls during flights on its London-New York route.
“In a world where we are now almost always ‘on call’, it seems people don’t want to say goodbye to their last sanctuary of non-connectivity. Flying allows us to switch off for a few hours, both from our own calls, and other people’s,” said Sam Baldwin, Skyscanner’s travel editor. “Virgin’s move into onboard mobile is the beginning of the end of the no-phone zone. I think it’s inevitable that within a few years, making mobile calls at 30,000 feet will be commonplace on all airlines.”
If in-flight mobile services were available, 48% of those polled said they would send texts, 35% said they would surf the web, 10% would send emails, while only 6% would actually make and take calls.
