BANGALORE: Are you one of those travelers who wait to use internet till you get off the plane? Looks like you don’t have to do that anymore; Air India is planning on getting the Wi-Fi connectivity to the planes. Earlier, internet could be accessed only on the foreign air base and not on the Indian ones but Countries like U.S. and Europe allow their passengers to use their Smartphones and other devices in aeroplane mode.

According to Times of India, Air India stumbled upon this prevalent rule when planning on setting up Wi-Fi for its aircrafts. A team of senior officials from Air India also met the Geneva based On Air, a company which provides both Wi-Fi and Mobile connectivity for more than 30 airline companies globally.

"We were shown a real time presentation of aircraft in air using Wi-Fi and/or mobile connectivity. All planes over India were shown in red, meaning they had neither of these two connections. We were told that India does not allow these two things in air and so even planes of foreign airlines equipped with Wi-Fi and/or mobile connectivity have to switch their systems off, while flying over the country," said a senior AI official. The Airline was also informed that two private airlines earlier had sought permission for the same but failed to get approval for it.

Apparently, Air India was dejected by the rule, and the airline being a national carrier, did not make sense to use the technology only on the foreign airspace and not in India. On the other hand, the set up of the technology was neither too expensive nor difficult.

“We are going to request the government to lift the ban on Wi-Fi in air and soon start a formal process with both the home and telecom ministry. Such a ban does not make sense when advanced countries actually take pride in ensuring flyers over their airspace remain connected all the time. Being a government company, we hope to get this ban lifted on our request. However, that process may take time and out plan of having internet in air is now delayed till that happens," said an official.

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