wpayne@uunet.uu.net (William Payne) (11/30/89)
I flew on Continental from Dallas to Pensacola over the Thanksgiving holidays. They have GTE "public phones" in the planes on which I flew. I used them going and coming (the return was delayed due to fog AFTER everyone was on board and the phones were great for arranging to be picked up at the airport). The cost was about two dollars per minute (well, I'm waiting for the bill and that's all I hope it will be). The transmission quality ranged from very good to very bad. The flight from Dallas had glossies behind the seats with a general explanation... ground stations around the States...but no details. I thought this might tie in with discussion about using mobile phones inside airplanes. The phone base stations were about the size of a pay phone and took a number of flavors of credit cards. The handset was portable and meant to be used from your seat. There were two phones per plane (one behind the cockpit, one just on front of the rear lavatories). The phones got quite a bit of use on the delayed flight. I might add that during the two hours spent waiting for the fog to lift, the phones were useless. Anyone know details of this system? Bill Payne DSC Communications Plano, TX (okay...Dallas) attctc!digi!wpayne