The Airfone, owned by Verizon, is essentially an extremely expensive in-flight payphone. I remember using one of these phones to make a call in 2001 — the bill was alarming. I don’t recall the exact number but I seem to remember a 10 minute call costing 40 or 50 bucks. I have since used these phones occasionally to make calls in-flight, usually when a flight is late and someone expecting to meet me at the airport might not be aware of the delay.
I don’t travel enough by plane any more to say whether or not I’ll miss the Airfone, but I do hope that someone buys this division and keeps this option available in some form.
I am surprised to find that the Airfone division employs 140 people. That seems like a lot of overhead for what is essentially a small payphone operation.