Continental puts e-mail in the skies By BILL HENSEL JR. Houston Chronicle Electronic mail is taking to the skies. Travelers on many of Continental Airlines' domestic flights soon will be able to access their e-mail, if they have a laptop and are willing to pay for it. By the end of June, Houston-based Continental will be installing new technology on its fleet of 757 aircraft to make the e-mail service available. The initial phase will involve 45 of the 757s, but plans call for more than 260 additional planes to be equipped by this fall. The move is aimed primarily at business travelers, who began cutting back on air travel about two years ago, at a time when the economy had begun slowing. Continental has been using VerizonAirfone's JetConnect service since November, which allows for instant messaging and text messaging. The e-mail service will be possible as the result of an upgrade in software developed by Tenzing Communications, a Seattle-based technology company. The company, formed in 1999 with the help of major investors like Airbus and Rockwell Collins, will essentially act as a mail carrier in providing the service. A traveler must connect a laptop to the phone in the seat, then launch a browser. Travelers are asked to provide the address of their desired mail server, their user name and password. "You give us that, and we collect mail for you and send mail on your behalf," said John Wade, executive vice president of strategic planning for Tenzing. Passengers who use the service must provide a credit card. Continental would not say what it plans to charge, but Verizon quotes a price of $15.98 per flight, plus 10 cents per kilobyte of data over 2K. Continental isn't the only airline scrambling to keep up with technological advances, even as the airline industry is in its worst slump ever. United Airlines announced this week it also is offering the service. United is charging the $15.98 price that is quoted by Verizon. Other major airlines also are researching ways to provide e-mail service, with an eye toward business travelers in particular. E-mail is the connectivity service that has been most requested by airline passengers, according to Tenzing officials. Bill Pallone, president of Verizon Airfone, earlier this year called e-mail "the next obvious step" in providing tools to make flying more productive for business travelers. Continental's installation of JetConnect, which is described as an in-flight communication, news and entertainment product, was completed in April. Continental's wide-body fleet of Boeing 777s and 767s do not have the Verizon Airfone/JetConnect product, and therefore will not have e-mail capability in the foreseeable future, the carrier said. Those planes primarily are used on international flights. The airline industry has witnessed a drop in revenues for the past two years, as changing business travel trends took hold, exacerbated by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The war in Iraq and the SARS outbreak added to the industry's woes. *************************************************** The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site/TnTisland.com Roj (Roger James) escape email mailto:ejames@xxxxxxxxx Trinbago site: www.tntisland.com Carib Brass Ctn site www.tntisland.com/caribbeanbrassconnection/ Steel Expressions www.mts.net/~ejames/se/ Mas Site: www.tntisland.com/tntrecords/mas2003/ Site of the Week: http://www.carib-link.net/naparima/naps.html TnT Webdirectory: http://search.co.tt *********************************************************