Two stories converge on Connexion by Boeing and Airbus's future in-flight data plans: Tenzing is folding itself into a firm jointly owned by itself, Airbus, and SITA, a Dutch-based air services integrator and air-phone operator. Tenzing will keep employees in Seattle, and SITA will be the majority shareholder. Tenzing will have the advantage now of this direct relationship with Airbus, which has begun to build Wi-Fi into planes as a standard option. The new company will also focus on in-flight wireless calls, the third firm to announce its intentions to offer or to test out this capability in the last few weeks. The new firm expects to offer that service in 2006 starting on intra-Europe flights where SITA already offers its more conventional in-flight phone service among other data integration offerings, while their high-speed data offering is still on track starting in 2005.
Meanwhile, Connexion by Boeing signed Siemens as a customer, which means that Siemens employees will have easier, and presumably cheaper, access to the service. Connexion is installed in just one Lufthansa plane so far, which flies from Munich to Los Angeles non-stop, but Lufthansa and several other airlines continue their commitment to build out their long-haul fleets.