Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...
was founded in 1999 by David Coe a small group of private investors and Simon "Symonty" Gresham. Initial funding the key software developed by Symonty. Further development funding was raised from private equity sources and in 2001 Airbus, Cathay Pacific and Rockwell Collins became shareholders. The firm had intended to launch in-flight data services, including
text messaging
Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending electronic messages, typically consisting of alphabetic and numeric characters, between two or more users of mobile devices, desktops/ laptops, or another type of compatible compu ...
,
instant messaging
Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and trigge ...
, and email using broadband satellite receivers using Inmarsat's fourth-generation satellite system. However, the satellites were not launched until March 2005 (I4 F1), November 2005 (I4 F2) and planned April 2008 for the final Pacific Ocean Region, I4 F3.
The first installation and email transmission was on an Air Canada 767 on August 26, 2000.
In 2001, after the
September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commerc ...
in New York, the FAA would not allow travelers to carry bags or laptops in the passenger cabin, this derailed the company and it followed up by laying off 90% of its workforce.
In the interim, Tenzing deployed a very-low-bandwidth system in partnership with Verizon AirFone's
radiotelephone
A radiotelephone (or radiophone), abbreviated RT, is a radio communication system for conducting a conversation; radiotelephony means telephony by radio. It is in contrast to '' radiotelegraphy'', which is radio transmission of telegrams (messa ...
network. This system was in commercial operation on
United Airlines
United Airlines, Inc. (commonly referred to as United), is a major American airline headquartered at the Willis Tower in Chicago, Illinois.
and a few other U.S. carriers for more than a year before being discontinued.
In 2004, Tenzing merged its operations into a new company, OnAir, formed with
SITA
Sita (; ) also called as Janaki and Vaidehi is a Hindu goddess and the female protagonist of the Hindu epic, '' Ramayana''. She is the consort of Rama, the avatar of the god Vishnu, and is regarded as a form of Vishnu's consort, Lakshmi ...
and Airbus. OnAir originally intended to introduce
broadband
In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...
and in-flight cell services in 2005, but further delays in Inmarsat's satellite launches and other factors put inflight trials back until early 2008 and first announced customer launch on Kingfisher Airlines mid-2009.