Emirates is celebrating 10 years of enabling mobile phone use by passengers on board its aircraft in flight.

Emirates made history in March 2008 by becoming the first airline in the world to allow customers to make and receive calls and send SMS messages from their own mobile phones.

The inaugural phone call was made on March 20, 2008 on Emirates flight EK751 from Dubai to Casablanca. Since then over 2.8 million calls have been made, 60% of which were made from the aircraft, while over a million calls were answered by passengers travelling on Emirates.

The longest call recorded was on a flight from Orlando to Dubai on February 5, 2018 lasting 3 hours and 50 minutes. Over the last 10 years, 87 million SMSs have also been sent or received.

Emirates has been at the forefront of innovation with connectivity and inflight entertainment. It was also the first airline to install TV screens in every seat on every aircraft in its fleet in 1992.

Today, Emirates provides comprehensive and state-of-the-art entertainment and communications services in the skies with over 3,500 channels of entertainment including over 700 movies.

Emirates Skywards members currently enjoy special benefits depending on their membership tier and class of travel, including free Wi-Fi when travelling in First Class or Business Class.