Airfone Takes Off as Travelers Get the Message

WASHINGTON —  Foul weather and flight delays have turned flying into a nightmare for some air travelers but have been a dream come true for the company that is putting telephones on airplanes.

“The minute there’s bad weather and delays the call volume shoots up,” said Sandra Goeken, a spokeswoman for GTE Airfone Inc., which is having its telephones installed by some airlines at the rate of one aircraft per day.

More than 2 million calls have been placed from the company’s phones since they were first installed in October, 1984, she said. About 475 planes of 16 major carriers have Airfone service, and it is expected to be in about 225 more by the end of the year, she said. About 3,200 commercial aircraft are registered in the United States.

Since about 60% of the more than 1 million air travelers each day are business travelers, the company assumes they are its biggest customers. But the company is recording an increasing number of first-time users--22% more in the past six months, Goeken said.

Growing Acceptance

“When you see it for the first time, you don’t really plan on using it,” she said. As travelers see more of the Airfones, they begin to use them. “Now, it’s so much a part of the airlines,” she said.

The phones also have been used several times in medical emergencies to relay patient information to doctors and hospitals on the ground, she said.

Calls from the air are directed to one of the nation’s 68 ground stations. Calls can last 30 to 45 minutes before the connection gets fuzzy.

Calls are billed electronically to the caller’s credit card--MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Carte Blanche, Diners Club or Air Travel Card--at a flat rate. Calls within the United States and Canada cost $7.50 for the first three minutes and $1.25 for each additional minute. Those figures double for international calls.

The company plans soon to provide connections that will enable transmission of data, such as from portable computers, Goeken said.

Narrow-body planes are equipped with one to two phones, and wide-body jets carry four to eight, all of which are cordless. Passengers can take the handset to their seats to make their calls.

In the future, some planes may have a phone for every passenger. The company is developing a small phone that can be mounted in the back of a seat or in the arm rest, Goeken said.

Airfone, a subsidiary of GTE Corp. based in Oak Brook, Ill., declined to disclose its revenue or earnings.

The company recently formed Railfone, which has adapted the technology of mobile communications to the railroad and put phones in Amtrak Metroliners operating in the New York to Washington corridor.

Airfone--whose founder and chairman, John D. Goeken, helped start the company that became MCI Communications Corp., the nation’s second-largest long-distance phone company--has been operating with an experimental license.

The Federal Communications Commission last week renewed the license for two years.

Spectrum May Be Full

No company has tried to compete with Airfone,Goeken said, because of the company’s investment in the business--10 years developing the technology, building a nationwide system of ground stations and establishing a track record.

The FCC’s chief engineer, Thomas P. Stanley, said Airfone also may not have had competition because of the lack of a key resource--space on the electromagnetic spectrum.

“There does not appear to be sufficient spectrum for another air-to-ground service” like Airfone’s, Stanley said.

He added, however, that several companies are vying for use of a different part of the spectrum to develop a market for air-to-ground calls via satellite, a service that could compete with Airfone.

In granting license renewal, the FCC also permitted Airfone to move to a different part of the spectrum where it will experience less interference. But use of that band does not entitle Airfone to a permanent home on the spectrum, Stanley said.

The FCC will begin considering, possibly as soon as this fall, the best use of that spectrum space for the public. If the commission decides that air-to-ground service is the best use, it then would have to determine who would use it--Airfone, another company or some combination of companies, Stanley said.