Newly incorporated OnAir today announced details of its Board and the management team which will implement its key corporate objective of providing voice and data communications for short and long haul flights on Airbus and Boeing aircraft.
“We are confident that with the calibre of people involved in OnAir we will continue to grow our customer base on long-haul flights and bring GSM mobile telephony to the market by mid-2006 for European flights,” said OnAir CEO, George Cooper.

OnAir SMS on long-haul flights is currently used by Asiana Airlines, Emirates, Iberia, Lauda Italy, Malaysia Airlines, Northwest Airlines, Pakistan International Airlines, Qantas and Virgin Atlantic.

“The OnAir Board is an excellent combination of experience and skills from the different but complementary worlds of aircraft manufacturing, airline management and IT knowledge and expertise. We have representatives from across the airline industry including the majority stakeholder, SITA INC (Information Networking Computing), Airbus and Tenzing,” said OnAir Board Chairman and SITA INC Managing Director, Francesco Violante.

The other OnAir Board members are Peter Buecking, SITA President; Ricardo Lippi, SITAÊ INC Chairman; Paul Coby, SITA Chairman; Beno”t Debains, Airbus Deputy CFO; Paul Charbonnier, Airbus Vice President Flight and Ground Information Services & Customer Services; and Alex Duff, former Tenzing CFO.

The OnAir management team is led by CEO George Cooper, and comprises Véronique Blanc, CTO GSM; John Wade, CTO Data Services; Jon Osmon, acting CFO; Andrew Charlton, Head of Regulatory Affairs; Stuart Dunleavy, Head of Business Development; and Catherine Stam, Head of Marketing.

John Wade is also General Manager of OnAir USA which is focussed on the development of next-generation on-board data services such as Internet and corporate network access.

The I service portfolio will allow airline passengers to use their personal devices, such as mobile phones, PDAs and laptops, to communicate in a variety of ways during flights, i.e. make and receive phone calls, send and receive text messages, read and send e-mail, access corporate networks, browse the Internet or chat. Some services, such as text messaging, are also provided through the in-flight entertainment system.
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