Emirates celebrates 10 years of mobile phone connectivity on flights

Emirates is celebrating 10 years of enabling mobile phone use on board its aircraft.
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Emirates made history in March 2008 by becoming the first airline in the world to allow customers to make and receive calls, as well as send SMS messages from their own mobile phones.

The inaugural phone call was made on March 20, 2008 on Emirates flight EK751 from Dubai to Casablanca. Since then over 2.8 million calls have been made, 60% of which were made from the aircraft, while over a million calls were answered by passengers travelling on Emirates.  The longest call recorded was on a flight from Orlando to Dubai on February 5, 2018 lasting 3 hours and 50 minutes. Over the last 10 years, 87 million SMS messages have also been sent or received.