China Eastern Airlines has been approved by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) to commence inflight internet service on 21 of its wide-bodied aircraft. China Eastern will now have the largest-scale inflight internet service among Chinese carriers.
In preparation for its inflight internet service for passengers, China Eastern has expanded testing on its KU band satellite onboard communications service. The aircraft approved for the internet service include its Boeing 777 and 767, and Airbus A320 that are flying both international and domestic routes.
In April last year, China Eastern became the first Chinese carrier approved by the MIIT and Civil Aviation Administration of China to test inflight internet service. It then became the first Chinese carrier to use KU band satellite to achieve ground-to-air connectivity from July to September last year. In the same year China Eastern also partnered with China UnionPay to offer one of the first inflight credit card payment services in the world via satellite internet.
China Eastern will complete refitting the hardware of the approved aircraft within this year and plans to complete installations for its entire fleet by 2017-2018 to have its fleet fully connected.(Translation by David)
