HELPING FACILITATE YOUR CONNEXION

Mobile communications service appearing on more routes worldwide

BY JACK ARENDS

Connexion by Boeing, Boeing's mobile communications business, opened to rave reviews when it made its debut aboard Lufthansa German Airlines in May 2004. As the year ended, the audience kept applauding: Customer airlines added routes, and corporate customers opened group accounts serving more than 300,000 business travelers.

Employers around the world, including companies such as Boeing, Lufthansa and Siemens, have quickly recognized how Connexion can improve their traveling employees' productivity by enabling them to stay connected to what's important as they surf the Web, read e-mail or review documents on virtual private networks. These companies signed corporate service agreements that enable employees to submit Connexion bills as company expenses. Connexion recorded its 100th corporate customer in October 2004, and quickly added another 100 corporate customers by year's end.

In December, Connexion came to Broadway as Lufthansa became the first airline to offer Connexion by Boeing service from New York. Service began Dec. 14 aboard Lufthansa flights 400 and 401 linking New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport and Frankfurt, and on Dec. 27 service was added to Flights 410 and 411, flying between JFK and Munich.

By year's end, passengers on three airlines flying out of Tokyo also were using the Connexion by Boeing service aboard Lufthansa flights to Munich, ANA (All Nippon Airways) flights to Shanghai, and Japan Airlines flights to London.

Scandinavian Airlines earned its own time in the spotlight in December by opening service on its Copenhagen-Seattle route. The airlines have branded their respective Connexion-enabled high-speed Internet offerings as Lufthansa FlyNet, SAS Net Access, JAL SkyOnline, and ANA@AIR.

Lufthansa, following its opening act in May, added Connexion service on routes between Germany and Tehran, Buenos Aires, and Santiago, Chile, and into U.S. locations including San Francisco, Charlotte, N.C., Denver and Miami. As the year ended, service began between Frankfurt and Detroit.

SAS, on schedule to deploy Connexion aboard its entire long-haul fleet by April 2005, plans to follow its Seattle debut by offering the mobile communications service on its New York-Copenhagen and New York-Stockholm routes. SAS also will link Copenhagen with Washington, D.C., Chicago, Bangkok, Tokyo, and Singapore (as well as Beijing and Shanghai once regulatory approval is received). ANA and JAL also will add routes in 2005 as more of their airliners are equipped with the Connexion system.

Singapore Airlines expects to deploy its own version of Connexion service as part of its Cyber Cabin strategy-including four channels of live television-in mid-2005, starting on the Singapore-London route. To make it easier for residents of Singapore to use the service, Connexion has signed associate-service-provider agreements with that country's two leading providers of wireless service, SingTel and StarHub.

The agreements mean that passengers who use wireless laptops aboard any Connexion-equipped airliner can bill their time to their existing carrier accounts. Similar agreements are in place with T-Systems, NTT DoCoMo, NTT Communications, 1 und 1, Rover Rabbit, Infonet and iPass, and all are designed to make it easy for passengers to log on to Connexion by Boeing by using an existing account with one of these providers.

Three more airlines-China Airlines, Korean Air and Asiana-have signed agreements to offer Connexion by Boeing service beginning in 2005 and 2006. Another three airline customers, whose identities have not yet been disclosed, also have declared their intent to offer the service, said Stan Deal, vice president of commercial aviation business for Connexion by Boeing.

"This is an exciting time, for our business and for the world," Deal said. "We are delighted to bring this new technology to travelers and to the airlines that serve them. The addition of Connexion by Boeing inflight connectivity adds another element of branding distinction for our customers."

jack.h.arends@boeing.com