On Wednesday, May 15, 2013 7:31:58 PM UTC+2, soartech wrote:
I have heard that cell phone calls don't work well while flying

because of hitting too many towers

at the same time. But what about Internet access from a Smartphone.

Does that work?

In Germany, you have internet access in-flight even when you can't do voice calls. Not very reliable, but good enough for SkyLines live tracking via XCSoar (http://www.skylines-project.org/tracking/). A clubmate went to South Africa last winter, and he had reliable internet up to 6000m.

XCSoar can already load METAR/TAF during the flight, and we want to implement more live weather data, like map overlays.