Qantas Airlines will begin offering iPads on a trial basis to its passengers for in-flight entertainment. The airline will be offering the devices to all 254 passengers on the plane. It will conduct the experiment on a single Boeing 767-300 aircraft flying between Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane.
German international airline carrier Lufthansa will be the first to introduce onboard internet for international flights from the US. Services departing from New York, Detroit and Atlanta into Frankfurt will have wireless internet expected to be fast enough to connect to a VPN and send large attachments. However, it is not clear exactly how much bandwidth each passenger will have access to.
German airline Lufthansa is offering a free flight to Germany for Gray Powell, the Apple engineer who accidentally left a prototype iPhone behind at a German-themed bar in California. Specifically Powell is being offered a business-class flight to Munich, where Lufthansa has just opened a beer lounge. "I recently read in the news that you lost a very special phone at a German beer bar in California," reads a letter from the airline's Americas marketing director, Nicola Lange.
Airline Lufthansa revealed it will soon offer improved cellphone and Internet services on its long-distance flights, bettering those offered from other airlines. According to a Monday WSJ report (subscription required), the German company will partner with Panasonic to offer the connection services, called FlyNet, on flights between Europe and North America in the next few months before expanding the service to all of its planes and routes.
