Airfone was an air-ground radiotelephone service developed by MCI founder John D. Goeken, and operated under the names Airfone, GTE Airfone, and Verizon Airfone. Airfone allowed passengers to make telephone calls (later including data modem service) in-flight. Airfone handsets were often located in the middle airliner seatbacks, with two handsets per row for 6-wide coach seating configurations, and more or less depending on the aircraft layout and fare class. First class cabins typically had one handset per seat. Some planes had one or more bulkhead mounted phone stations with cordless handsets that the passengers could use, instead of the multiple wired handsets. Airfone phone calls were usually quite expensive compared to ground-based telephone calls, costing $3.99 per call and $4.99 per minute in 2006. The original Airfone main office and network operations center are located at 2809 Butterfield Rd, Oak Brook, Illinois. The network operations center remains at this location. Bell Mobility used the Airfone technology on Air Canada flights, but branded its service as Skytel (no relation to the Verizon-owned paging firm of the same name). Use Calls were often discounted or free for customers of airplane-based catalogs like Sky Mall, and Verizon Wireless subscribers could pay $10 per month and 10 cents a call or a flat 69 cents per call with no monthly fee. Airfone could be used for very slow modem calls, and attempts at data service were made in 2003 and 2004 using an on-board email proxy server. Many of the in-flight calls made by victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks were made over Airfone and Air One. Airfone's primary competitor was Air One, operated by AT&T Wireless division Claircom Communications Group, and was available onboard American Airlines, Northwest Airlines, and select Delta Air Lines aircraft. The Air One service was discontinued in 2002. History Development The Airfone was originated by John D. Goeken (who also founded MCI Communications and FTD's Mercury Network) in the 1970s. Western Union purchased a fifty percent share in Airfone in 1981 and sold to GTE in 1986 for US$39 million cash. Delta Air Lines offered the United States's first public air-to-ground telephone system with Airfone. The first iteration of Airfone service only permitted air-to-ground calls and frequently dropped calls. A new generation dubbed GenStar was developed jointly by GTE and IEX Corp. in 1992. IEX developed the software, which ran on hardware built by Stratus Computers. GenStar introduced