Phone use on planes 'unwelcome'

With Ofcom recently announcing a plan to introduce mobile phone connections on aeroplanes, VoIP users may have hoped this would expand into internet telephony services.

But a spokesman for management, engineering and development consultancy Mott Macdonald said that the loss of silence and relative calm on planes would likely put people off using the service.

"Instead of: 'I'm on the train' we'll have: 'I'm on the plane'," said Mott Macdonald's director of aviation strategy, Laurence Price.

"I think it is actually quite nice to be away from it for a while, particularly when you're going long haul."

Travellers sitting in expensive seats are more likely to be annoyed if the implementation of in-flight phone systems went ahead, Mr Price suggested.

"Someone bleating into a phone for two hours is not what I want if I'm paying reasonable money to go in one of the better cabins on an aeroplane," he explained.