Passengers will soon be able to make calls during flights

Passengers will soon be able to make calls during flights, according to the Air Transport Users Council (AUC).

Its comments follow a ruling made by the telecommunications industry regulator this week, Ofcom, which approved the use of mobile phones on aircrafts in Europe.

However, the body stipulated that the specific technologies used by airlines would need to be approved by the Civil Aviation Authority and the European Aviation Safety Agency.

James Fremantle, industry affairs manager for the AUC, said: "[Airlines] should take into account the interests of the minority of passengers who might not want it, and put into place measures that would alleviate some of the main problems that passengers might have."

He added that the AUC hopes that in-flights calls do not become a "free for all for everyone", which many passengers would find "disturbing".

In June 2006, the International Air Passengers Association warned that 45 per cent of respondents to their survey ranked listening to someone's telephone calls as the second most irritating thing they could imagine on an aircraft.

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