India's Kingfisher Airlines has become the first carrier to sign up for the full range of passenger communications services offered by Airbus/SITA joint venture OnAir.

Starting next year, passengers in Kingfisher’s Airbus A330 and A340 long-haul aircraft will have access to OnAir’s Inmarsat-supported Webmail and Webchat services, with Internet access and onboard mobile phone to follow in 2009.

The agreement brings to four the number of carriers committed to OnAir – the others are Ryanair, Malaysian low-cost operator AirAsia and Shenzhen Airlines of China. A further three – Air France, bmi of the UK and TAP Portugal – are to carry out commercial trials.

The services will be available initially on five of the 15 Airbus A330s that Kingfisher has on order and on five of the ten Airbus A340s, and could ultimately be extended to the whole long-range fleet, which is due to include at least five A380s.
The A330s will be used on routes from India to Europe and Asia, the A340s on longer routes, including those to the USA.

The air-to-ground link for the services will be supported by Inmarsat SwiftBroadband 432kbit/sec satellite capability, which is due to be commercially introduced on October 22. Passengers will pay for Webmail and Webchat on a per-flight basis, and for Internet access per kilobyte of data downloaded. Mobile phone users will incur costs similar to international roaming rates and will be billed by their usual mobile operators.

OnAir’s Internet service will allow users to access the Internet and private networks from wired or wireless laptops, BlackBerry-type devices or the seatback IFE system. The Webmail service will give access to existing Web-based email accounts, allowing users to preview the contents of inboxes at no charge before purchasing the service.
Webchat will support personal instant messaging via existing AIM (AOL), ICQ, MSN Messenger/Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger accounts.

OnAir is the latest addition to Kingfisher’s ambitious array of cabin services, which also includes live TV and audio/video-on-demand at every seat on domestic routes.