Chinese airlines introduce online services on flights, but doing so is fraught with difficulties

Chinese airlines are working overtime to meet the needs of passengers who cannot bear to be out of touch with what is happening on the ground while they are flying.

Passengers on some flights can now send e-mails, book hotels, watch online videos and even make online purchases that allow them to receive whatever they ordered as soon as they land.

Air China staff adjust equipment on board. Provided to China Daily

Airlines including Air China, China Southern Airlines and China Eastern Airlines are now introducing these kinds of services, the fruit of work on their in-flight Wi-Fi networks over the past five years.

The in-flight Wi-Fi of Air China, which is leading the charge, allows passengers on some flights to use mobile devices or laptops to browse online shopping websites such as JD.com, video websites such as iqiyi.com, news websites with a feed from Xinhua News Agency and to tweet on the Chinese Twitter-like website Sina weibo.

"After every flight with Wi-Fi, Sina at Air China has to service its background system to ensure it is running well," says Geng Jinsong, the in-flight network project office of Air China.

"Tons of posts pour out when the planes take off, sometimes causing a system crash," Geng says.

In-flight live broadcasting is also growing. On Sept 3, passengers on flight CA1369, from Beijing to Sanya, watched a live telecast of the military parade to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.

"Passengers were excited when they were told they wouldn't miss the parade," Geng says, adding that he is proud of the latest achievement of live telecast via radio and television satellite signals.

Air China has been working on in-flight Wi-Fi since 2010. Six aircraft can now provide passengers with Internet access using an airline server.

The in-flight network can reach a speed of 30Mbps, close to the speed of a regular 4G mobile network, Geng says.

For an aircraft like an A330-300, six signal projectors are set around the cabin, each of which guarantees 60 devices' connectivity to the Internet. This means more than 300 Internet connections can be made.

However, the in-flight Wi-Fi signals Air China uses are different to regular 4G signals of China Mobile, China Unicom or China Telecom, the three biggest mobile network operators in China.

Passengers are redirected to websites from the homepage of the Air China in-flight network, which provides news content and services such as online shopping.

Air China has refitted 22 aircraft, equipping them with in-flight Wi-Fi. Sixteen of them are connected to the local area network in the aircraft, and the others can connect to the Internet through three other channels, L-Band, air-to-ground (ATG), and KU-Band.

The L-Band and the KU-Band are satellite-based channels, and ATG is a ground-based channel, says Yang Huiting, of the electronic networks department at Air Media Group.

L-Band is the 1 to 2 gigahertz range of the radio spectrum, traditionally used for aircraft cockpit communications with the ground, and the KU-Band ranges from 12 to 18 GHz..

Because ATG signals are transmitted to aircraft from the ground, such communications require airlines to build towers every 300 kilometers along flight paths, which is impossible, Yang says.

So Chinese airlines are concentrating on connecting in-flight Internet networks using KU-Band signals, a method adopted worldwide.

"Foreign airlines started work much earlier," Yang says. "However, because the process in China began 10 years later, domestic airlines started from a higher level."

Wang Zibo, a satellite communications technology engineer with Beijing Marine Communication & Navigation Co, says onboard Wi-Fi supported by ATG is limited.

"Imagine building signal towers all over the world. It may be possible, but when would it end?"

Wang says he sees no point in developing ATG communications for onboard Wi-Fi, because the KU-band is already available and officially sanctioned.

"The three types of onboard Wi-Fi all have shortcomings," Wang says. For example, because of L-Band's narrowness, the Internet speeds it delivers are slow. A big drawback of KU-Band is its high cost, he says.

"During trials, airlines provide Wi-Fi free, but that can't go on forever."

Jiao Yuwei, a student at Huahang Aviation A School in Langfang, Hebei province, says that although he studies aviation, in-flight Wi-Fi is still quite new to him.

"I'm taking a wait-and-see attitude to this. My major concern is the high price but low network speed."

He hopes to get a chance to try in-flight Wi-Fi but is unwilling to pay for it, he says. For others, cost is a concern, too, he says, pointing to the fact that on the ground Wi-Fi is generally free.

Chinese airlines have yet to set prices for in-flight Wi-Fi services, or even a method for calculating them.

Geng says that for Air China, pricing according to connection time and net flow are both possible. The airline will look at the pricing of airlines elsewhere, which ranges from several dollars an hour to several dollars a minute.

"But we are also talking to partners who have booked places on our website, discussing ways by which they can cover the high Internet fees. I believe that for passengers that will be the best pricing."

Geng tells the story of a passenger who sent an e-mail with a 50Mb attachment through the in-flight network.

"She fell asleep, and when she awoke, a bill of $1,200 was waiting for her. It sounds ridiculous, but it highlights the problem, which we are working on solving."

China Southern Airlines has been doing trial flights with an Internet connection supported by KU-Band on its Beijing-Gungzhou and Beijing-Shanghai routes, and China Eastern Airlines has been doing similar trials.

For Air China, it initially took 15 days to equip an aircraft with in-flight Wi-Fi, Geng says, but that job now takes just three days.

However, this does not mean the task of refitting all of Air China's nearly 500 aircraft will be complete anytime soon.

Several government departments are involved, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Civil Aviation Administration and the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, he says, adding that safety is always the main concern. As the trials of inflight Wi-Fi began only recently, Chinese airlines need more time and data to ensure the safety of planes and passengers.

Although onboard Wi-Fi is still a novelty in China, most travelers show a strong interest when told it is available onboard, but it also has its detractors.

Speaking of onboard Wi-Fi, Huang Jie, an employee with China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation, who flies frequently, says: "Some of the planes I have flown on have had LAN Wi-Fi, but the functions are limited. I would rather watch a film downloaded to a memory device and get some rest as I did before."

With the stress of business trips, Huang says, she is more concerned about getting rest while flying and is concerned that once in-flight Wi-Fi is widely used she will have to work even in the air.

Yan Dongjie contributed to the story.

Contact the writer at yandongjie@chinadaily.com.cn

( China Daily European Weekly 10/09/2015 page20)