This week, the airline confirmed an agreement with Panasonic Avionics Corporation to provide broadband access across its entire fleet, as well as call and data access for cell phones.

With the improved communications system installed, future passengers will be able to access the web during flights using their own devices and seatback screens.

I haven’t flown Cathay Pacific before, but I am most certainly liking the concept of 50mb broadband speeds when I’m in the air, especially on a long-haul flight where I might want to do a bit of work online. I wonder just how fast this service would actually be in a live environment? Could you, for instance, actually download a 1.5GB iTunes movie in 10 minutes?

That would be rather swish.

AIR New Zealand is planning to let some passengers send text messages and emails mid-flight by the end of the year but fellow travellers need not worry – phone calls will not be allowed.

New Zealand’s national carrier said it expects to let people send and receive text messages and emails on their iPhones, Blackberries and GSM mobiles on its new 777-300 aircrafts by November.

The new service will also enable customers to use their Netbooks or laptops in conjunction with their mobile broadband connection to access the Internet. The airline said the new mobile text and data service is being introduced after feedback from passengers who want to stay connected on long-haul flights but it is subject to regulatory approval.

I think banning voice is the way ahead — and it’s critical to ensure that people swap their handsets to silent mode as well. The last thing you want is a 10-hour flight to LAX with ‘bing bing’ BlackBerry Messenger alerts every 5 minutes.

I often fly Air New Zealand from LAX to LHR. Although it’s a little bit inconvenient doing the hop from San Francisco to LAX, I’ve always found the Air New Zealand service phenomenal and reasonable in terms of cost. I’m looking forward to being able to do email and make the odd online query as necessary during my flights. I wonder what it’ll cost?

Mobile phones could also become “personal travel folders”, says SITA, holding a passenger’s boarding passes, baggage tracking information and payment data and maybe even visa and biometric information.

It’ll be interesting to see how the airline industry balances privacy and convenience in the next few years. It’s easy to see passengers embracing mobile ticketing, even the tracking scenarios, but storing biometric data on their phone? I’m not so sure. After all, people have railed against such details being stored on passports and by the government, I’m not convinced they’d be willing to put such details in the hands of a commercial organisation for a few seconds shaved off check-in.

Travellers will be able to download their electronic boarding pass from delta.com, and then present it to airport security and later on at the boarding gate where it will be scanned. It looks like Delta’s got big plans for mobile check-in too: “Future enhancements include standby upgrades and same day, round trip check-in on delta.com, mobile and SMS check-in,” the company said.

It all sounds great, but what happens when your phone dies? Do airport staff have an emergency charger to hand?

Continental’s favoured system is a 2D barcode, which is scanned from the passengers’ mobiles and apparently harder to fake than other tokens.

I’m struggling to see a downside here: it saves time, saves paper, it saves the airlines a bit of cash and I’m far less likely to lose my mobile than I am a plane ticket. Please, airlines, hurry up and make mobile boarding passes the standard.

By the looks of things, it’s going to be a mammoth market at $87 billion worth of mobile ticketing transactions by 2011, as operators start using mobile ticketing to cut down on paper and trim costs, as well as fighting fraud. Apparently, the airline industry will see the benefits with around $500 of cost savings each year once it adopts mobile boarding passes.

And finally – finally! – NFC tickets will also start spreading, with serious uptake happening from 2009. I’m really hoping this does turn out to be the case – no more excuses for lost or torn tickets. After all, Oyster functionality is already being tested on mobiles, why not bring other modes of transport on board too?