Another Airline Adds Boeing's In-Flight Net Access

China Airlines said Wednesday that it will add in-flight broadband access provided by Connexion By Boeing.

The access, provided by a Boeing business unit, is already either available or will be soon from six other international carriers such as Germany's Lufthansa, Japan Airlines, Korea Air and SAS. So far, no U.S. airlines have signed up for the service.

Taiwan-based China Airlines said in a statement that it initially will deploy the service on flights to and from New York, Los Angeles, Anchorage, San Francisco and Vancouver, British Columbian.

Both phone and Internet access for airline passengers have been in the news lately. Boeing's arch-rival, Airbus, is currently testing in-flight Internet access and other vendors have been testing equipment that would allow passengers to make calls with their cell phones.