While business travellers are well connected to different forms of technology, no one knows for sure if they use them to make their in-flight time more efficient - or even want to do that.

"Eighty-five per cent of these travellers use a cellphone and a laptop or notebook computer. Thirty-one per cent use a PDA and 23 per cent use a Blackberry ... 90 per cent use e-mail fairly often," says Dave Pierzchala, an associate vice-president at marketing research company Ipsos-Reid.

Ipsos-Reid conducted the survey, The Canadian Business Travel Study 2004, entirely online, sampling 1,200 business travellers who had flown six or more times roundtrip in the previous 12 months.

"We don't know whether these travellers see an airplane as the office away from the office, like a hotel," Pierzchala says.

Photo courtesy of Ipsos-Reid
Dave Pierzchala of Ipsos-Reid says little is known about whether business travelers want to work while flying.

Arjun Basu, editor-in-chief of enRoute, Air Canada's in-flight magazine, concurs. "The jury's still out on whether people want to work on a plane," he says. "For some it's the only place where they find sanctuary.

"They can do anything but work," Basu says. "A plane can be a literal cocoon.”

For others, however, "the spectre of work is lurking there, too. They want to work. They want access."

While a one-hour flight may be more conducive to private catchup time, "the mindset starts to change" when it is longer than three or four hours, Basu says. "They're in there for a good while and can spend a few hours very productively."

Basu says some airlines are planning on going to complete business-class planes, which change the group dynamics of travellers. "If half the plane is working, will that make you work, too?" Tanya Racz, president of the Canadian Alliance of Business Travel, says she enjoys being able to stay connected while travelling internationally and not having to wait until she gets to the hotel to check e-mail. "I travel constantly. I live on my Blackberry."

Just more than a year ago Boeing Co. started offering passengers onboard wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) service with high-speed wireless Internet access. The service, called Connexion, offers high-speed connectivity in blocks of time - from one to two hours at about $10 to $17 US per hour, or for the duration of the flight from about $20 for a three- to six-hour trip, to about $30 for a longer flight.

"Connexion allows passengers to be productive, to have choices for how you spend your time while travelling. If you're on a flight from New York to Singapore for 19.5 hours, that's a long time to not be connected," says Boeing spokesman Terrence Scott.

Connexion allows business travellers "to go inside their company's firewall, to pull documents, check in with customers, send PowerPoint presentations, to know the status while travelling if things have changed," he says.

Scott admits, however, there are challenges with the service. "When you have a plane flying at 500 m.p.h. at 35,000 feet, maintaining contact isn't an easy thing to do."

Connexion is currently available on eight major commercial airlines, including Singapore Airlines, Japan Airlines, EL AL and more than half of Lufthansa's fleet. No major North American commercial airline is offering the service.

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Tanya Racz, president of the Canadian Alliance of Business Travel.

OnAir, a Geneva-based data and voice communications applications provider, is developing a competing wireless Internet service. The company, a joint venture between French aeronautics giant Airbus and Netherlands-based IT company SITA Inc., also concluded a deal in February that will allow passengers to use their cellphones for voice calls.

Last week, OnAir announced that TAP Air Portugal and British carrier bmi have both agreed to introduce the company's voice and text service for cellphones in separate three-month trial runs. The planes will be the first to allow passengers to make and receive calls using cellphones once the plane reaches an altitude of 10,000 feet.

The company is hoping for a general release of its service in 2007 for everywhere in the world except North America.

"With both airlines, initially there will be a couple of airplanes - two or three airplanes - equipped with this system," OnAir CEO George Cooper says. "We'll all be evaluating how it's going, what the usage is, how we handle the crew issues and so on."

In late 2004, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved a plan to allow airlines to offer in-flight wireless data service. The FCC also proposed lifting a ban that prohibits passengers from making and receiving cellphone calls in flight. Qualcomm, a California-based wireless voice and data services company, has since partnered with American Airlines to develop satellite-based air-to-ground cellular service.

The Canadian Aviation Regulations permit certain portable electronic devices (PEDs) with or without restrictions - for example, heart pacemakers and hearing aids.

But, "the use of portable electronic devices in-flight - such as cellphones and Blackberrys - is prohibited under Regulation 602.08. These PEDs may interfere with the safe operation of the aircraft," says Lucie Vignola, a Transport Canada spokeswoman.

Not everyone is thrilled about the potential for in-flight cellphone usage, Basu says. "The first voice you heard (about the FCC's proposal) was from people who didn't want it. A lot of people don't want cellphones on planes because they would feel invasive. What if the person next to you is on the phone the whole time?" Although Basu sees a "huge cost and connectivity issue" with the limited onboard Wi-Fi service currently available and says "no one's really using it," he predicts that if the price comes down and connectivity is stabilized, Wi-Fi service "will be much more popular than cellphones. You're not interrupting anyone else."

Racz says her membership is a split group when it comes to the potential for in-flight cellphone use.

"The majority are against it. There are people who have proper phone etiquette and those who don't. Some may be speaking loudly or using profanities.

"For some, that's their only down time. To be that connected may not be something that they want to have available to them," Racz says.

A recent report released by SITA says approximately 44 per cent of the airlines surveyed expect to be offering at least one of the various connection options such as short message service (SMS), Internet access, e-mail or mobile phones by the end of 2007.

- with files from The Canadian Press

(Anastasia MacLean can be reached at maclean@businessedge.ca)