Abstract: A system for completing air-to-ground telephone calls is arranged so that a call originating from an aircraft is received in a ground station and directed to a special purpose platform disposed in the land-based telecommunications network. The platform, which may be implemented as an interactive voice response system, includes the capability to interact with the caller by (a) collecting billing information, which may be a commercial credit card or a telephone calling card, or other billing mechanism which can be initiated by a request for connection to a telephone operator; (b) validating credit cards and telephone calling cards by initiating a query and receiving a response from elements in the telecommunications network or from an external database; (c) providing auxiliary features such as block calling, free calls, speed dialing, sequence calling, etc.; and (d) depending upon the type of call involved, completing the call as either a traditional 1+long distance call, or as a 0+(e.g.