At several junctures during the past decade, the inflight phone market looked like it would take off, making phone and wireless service affordable for the piston crowd. But the market remains iffy at the low end, the best bet being a satellite-based Iridium system piped into the aircraft audio system. Thanks to broadband Wi-Fi, more choices are on the way, but for now, heres an overview of how to make a call from a light aircraft.

Back when the earth was cooling, Bendix/Kings KT96 Flight Phone was the rather limited only choice.You picked up the handset and a ground-based operator routed your call. It worked-barely-and it proved the market for airborne phones, which really didnt advance much until 1991, when Texas-based AirCell developed a network of cell sites dedicated to aircraft use. AirCells idea was to use the growing infrastructure of terrestrial cell sites for both ground and airborne use from aircraft.

After a protracted legal struggle with the cellphone industry, AirCell finally got off the ground around 2000 with a line of equipment that included a large remote processor, equally awkward antennas and conventional handsets for the actual call. For a time, AirCell was ascendant and both the technology and service quality improved.

But like so many technological trial balloons, AirCells basic idea has been displaced by the next big thing and now the company is knee-deep in developing a wireless broadband system that might, once again, break open the market for airborne phone use. But for now, the choices in equipment for making calls on the fly are minimal, if reliable.