AIRLINE passengers who surf the web over the oceans will have to fold up their laptops — at least for a while — after a decision by Boeing to close the inflight internet service that it has been offering for the past three years.

Boeing said that it was losing money on the satellite-based broadband service known as Connexion although it has a small but devoted following among long-distance business travellers on airlines that use it. The Boeing service has not been helped by the present ban on bringing electronics on board flights in and out of London but airline officials say that the security clampdown is not expected to have more than a temporary impact on the use of computers by passengers.

The only service of its kind, it is most widely used by Lufthansa, which has equipped 62 of its 80 long-haul jets with the wi-fi signal that lets travellers run their offices and chat on voice-to-internet from 35,000 feet. The German airline, which has equipped Boeings and Airbuses with the system, is disappointed. “We are very happy with the service and we hope that we can continue to offer it in some form after the closure at the end of the year,” a Lufthansa spokesman said.

The 12 airlines that offer an internet connection acknowledge that only a small minority of passengers are prepared to pay the $9.95 (£5.30) an hour to tend their e-mails or link up to their corporate networks. Boeing, which invented its system in the late 1990s in the euphoria of the first internet bubble, said that only a handful on any flight tuned into the service. The first generation of inflight telephones, launched in the 1980s, suffered the same fate.

Lufthansa said that the maximum number of internet users on a single flight so far had been 40.

Boeing’s system never made a profit because US domestic airlines, scraping for every penny to survive since 2001, never bought it.

While some business people cherish the peace of flying unplugged from their terrestrial networks, industry experts say that the airborne internet is destined to return and succeed.

Devotees of permanent connection will not have to wait long because Airbus is to launch an alternative system with its new A380 superjumbo. The 550-seat airliner enters service with Singapore Airlines at the end of this year but internet access is unlikely to be ready by then.

The On-Air service, a company founded by Airbus and SITA, will start next year by allowing passengers to use their mobile phones for telephone calls inflight, then expand into e-mail and full broadband internet within a couple of years.

Justin Dubon, an Airbus spokesman, said: “The goal is to be able to integrate inflight entertainment with the internet so you will be able to search for anything, download films or anything you want.”

The company’s aim is to wire every one of the A380’s 550 or more seats for access to the internet at the same time.

Air France also aims to start the first ordinary mobile phone service on an Airbus 318 flying within Europe and to North Africa early next year. Passengers will be able to use 3G mobile phones to access the web, Jerome Nguyen, an Air France spokesman, said. The airline is aware of the possible problems of more than a hundred passengers calling to ask, “Guess where I’m phoning from?”

“We will evaluate passenger satisfaction and the possible nuisance after six months,” he said.

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