I don't know how or why they offer this but a company is offering free international calls. Check http://www.futurephone.com/faq.html. I am in no way associated with this company. I just called a friend in England with no problem. There was occasionaly an annoying time delay but that was it. Sound was excellent. I called a Holiday Inn in BKK. First time the call did not go through. Second try was so noisy they couldn't hear me. Third try was a success. Did you know that you can make phone calls from a plane if you are using a VoIP service such as Skype since the call goes out over the internet not via a cell phone. Might be of interest on those 17 hour flights. Jerry

So have you actually made a free call from an inflight phone using Skype? How would you do this?

I use Skype to talk to friends all over the place and I love it!

Please! Have some consideration for your fellow passengers and don't make phone calls from planes, even if it turns out you can. Long plane trips are bad enough as it is.

Thursdays, I'm with you! There was a recent survey of frequent travelers about calling from airplanes. As you may know, they may well allow people to make cell phones calls from airplanes within the next year. Those surveyed overwhelminging opposed cellphone calls from the air... the only thing that was rated as more annoying than listening to a one sided conversation while trapped in a plane was someone kicking the back of your seat!!

By the way, since there are only a few planes that have internet capacity on board (and none of them so far as I know are free) the idea of making free VoIP calls from a plane is pretty theoretical at at this point.

Yes, I agree that "super oud cell phone talkers" are annoying as hell, no matter where you are. The only time I would want to make a call on the plane is to let someone know I was going to be very late so as not to inconvenience the person picking me up.

Yesterday I was in an airport bathroom and there was a woman on the toilet talking to someone while toilets flushed all around her!!!