'I'm on the plane...' Ban on mobile phones to be lifted

You are squeezed into your seat, the seat-back tray rubbing against your knees because the fleshy man with body odour in front of you has just reclined as far as he can.

You are squeezed into your seat, the seat-back tray rubbing against your knees because the fleshy man with body odour in front of you has just reclined as far as he can.

Then, sitting next to you, a gormless-looking man picks up his mobile phone and shrieks out a conversation familiar to, and despised by, train passengers. "I'm on the plane. No, the plane. THE PLANE. Can you hear me." Suddenly, that two-hour hop to Miami feels more like 25 hours to Tulsa.

Such scenes could soon be reality for air passengers in the US after the Federal Communications Commission this week unanimously voted to lift a ban on the use of mobile phones during flights if concerns about safety issues could be answered. Some experts have estimated that mobiles could be in use in as little as two years. The commission also approved the use of broadband internet connection.

The pressure to allow passengers to use mobiles has come from a realisation that business travellers waste precious time in the air when the cannot use their phones or get access to the internet. In-flight phones in the back of a seat's head-rest have not been a success, largely because of their prohibitive price of calls which cost up to $4 (£2.60) a minute.

But an FCC spokeswoman said they had hundreds of phone calls from people horrified by the move. "We've also received a couple hundred of e-mails from the public, most of whom believe that use of devices that don't involve talking are fine, but are not looking forward to the possibility of hearing more conversations than they do now."

The FCC commissioners said there had been hesitation about the social impact of allowing the use of mobile phones on planes but said such concerns were not in its remit. Its mandate is to facilitate easier communication. Jonathan Adelstein, a commissioner, said: "Many passengers don't relish the idea of sitting next to someone yelling into their cellphones for an entire six-hour flight."

The Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) also bans the use of mobile phones in planes, because of safety worries. There has long been concern that the use of them could interfere with a plane's navigation and communication equipment. But phone companies say that there is new technology that can solve the problem by allowing signals to be sent to a small antenna on the plane that would beam signals to on-ground towers on specially designated channels. That would cost about $100,000 per plane.

One solution might be to have separate, "quiet" compartments on the plane for those who do not want to use phones. However, some people believe that airlines might charge more for that privilege.

A spokesman for American Airlines, told USA Today: "We don't even know if we're going to do this yet. Our customers don't want to listen to 250 conversations at once."Use of mobile phones in flights will likely not be limited to US carriers.

The Airbus consortium has been testing a system that sends phone calls from its A320 jets to the ground via a satellite-phone network. It plans to enable in-flight mobile calls in 2006.