Indians still don’t get to experience internet services on domestic flights, while this is pretty common in many international countries. First of all, the airlines advise the passengers to either turn off their smartphones or use them in flight mode, because of which using the internet is impossible. This is done for safety purposes. But, there are systems with which airlines can equip their aircraft with tools that can give internet access to the customers while on the air. It could be done in partnership with the satcom companies such as Starlink or with the telecom operators. However, it would definitely not come for free for the passengers. As anyone who has travelled in an aircraft knows, you have to pay exorbitant prices for anything you consume inside the aircraft. The same could be true for data once it arrives for the consumers on domestic Indian flights. So, we ran a short one-day poll on Twitter to see if Indians would be interested in paying for data inside flights. Here are the results.
Not Many are Interested in Paying for Data Inside Flights
A majority of 56.9% of users said that they wouldn’t pay for data or internet services on flights that are longer than two hours. However, 32.2% of users said that they would pay for the internet if their flights were longer than two hours. While 10.9% of users said that they were not sure if they would pay or not. This means that 3 out of 10 users are ready to pay for internet inside flights, whereas almost 6 out of 10 would not pay and 1 out of 10 is not sure of it. In a country such as India, where consumers use so much data every day because of its affordable nature, it is surprising how that trend hasn’t caught up with the airline sector yet. Maybe it is because Indians mostly want affordable data, which might not be possible inside flights. Things aren’t clear about when Indians would finally get to use the internet inside aircraft when travelling on domestic routes. However, it should change in the coming years with the satcom sector booming in India.
