Turn off your mobile when you’re on a flight – or face sky-high roaming charges

One passenger flying from London to New York looked at social media for ONE minute over Norwegian air space ...and it cost £40

TOURISTS who forget to switch off their mobile phones while travelling by air or sea are at risk of being hit by ‘ accidental roaming’ charges. Roaming fees apply to mobile phones or tablets used abroad. In recent years these costs have been capped to prevent soaring bills, but such price restrictions do not apply to satellite systems on aeroplanes and boats.

If a smartphone picks up a signal from the vessel’s own on-board system, the traveller can incur mobile roaming charges of several pounds per megabyte – the data needed for browsing just one single webpage.

This can happen even if a passenger is not actively using their phone. Smartphone apps can update in the background, eating up data in the process. The phone only needs to be switched on with data roaming enabled for charges to occur.

Airlines and cruise- liners are under pressure to cater for roundt he- cl ock phone and i nternet access, which means ‘bill shock’ for accidental roaming could become more of a problem.

On-board satellite systems are premium services with prices to match and are not subject to the same roaming caps that exist when on land.

A passenger flying from Ireland to the US last month learned this expensive lesson the hard way.

He forgot to switch off his mobile during the flight and left it in the overhead baggage compartment. It automatically connected to the airline’s on-board system, triggering charges of more than £200 from his mobile network back home.

Ferry passengers have been caught out by hefty fees of hundreds of pounds when their mobiles automatically connected to the on-board system, even when sailing past European countries where networks do not charge extra for roaming.

Many passengers are likely to switch on their mobiles to take photos during a cruise, meaning they can be caught out despite not actively using their phones to browse the internet. One in-flight internet service is AeroMobile. If a phone is switched on, with data roaming enabled, it can pick up the signal.

If the network provider has an agreement with AeroMobile a customer can be charged for any usage during the flight.

Vodafone charges up to £7.20 per megabyte of data for airline connections. Three mobile charges £6 per megabyte. Customers of EE can buy a data add-on for aircraft – at £36 per day for just five megabytes. Some systems require a separate payment and log-in process, protecting customers from automatic connection and ensuing bills.

But anyone charged extra should contact their mobile provider to ensure fees are valid – because administrative blunders can arise.

Customers might be charged roaming fees when their phones connect to a signal from a network in a nearby country – even if they are thousands of feet above it or miles from shore. If that country is in the EU there should be no additional cost.

Double-checking proved worthwhile for Alexandra Lucas, who was ready to absorb a sizeable bill this month for a small amount of data used in December.

Alexandra, who is in her 30s and lives in Surrey, absent-mindedly refreshed a social media account on her smartphone while on a flight to New York for a long weekend. As a result, she was charged £40 worth of roaming charges during a brief spell in Norwegian air space.

She says: ‘I did it without thinking. When I saw the bill, I thought it was weird that I was charged for mobile roaming in Scandinavia when travelling from London to New York.

‘But I understand it was my fault for using the phone on board an aeroplane – and it was an expensive mistake I will not be repeating.’

The £ 40 charge was for eight megabytes of data usage in Norway – the equivalent of nearly one minute usage of a smartphone app.

By comparison, in New York she used up to ten times that amount of data each day and was billed half the sum – at £20 – for the entire US trip.

The Mail on Sunday encouraged Alexandra to challenge the charge – on the grounds that Norway is in the European Economic Area and data used should come out of her normal monthly allowance under ‘roam like at home’ rules.

Since June 2017 these rules have allowed UK tourists to pay the same for phone usage abroad as they would at home while travelling in the European Economic Area – including Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

Alexandra’s network agreed and refunded the £40.