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American Airlines To Offer Wi-Fi In Planes
Firmafest writes "In USA Today there's a scoop that American Airlines will offer Wi-Fi on domestic flights. Price is approx. $10 to get connected. Being a frequent international flyer I hope this will catch on. The LA Times reports that the cost is about $100,000 to equip a plane. While that number seems high, it will probably be worth it. If I had a choice between two flights both equally good, I'd pick the Wi-Fi enabled one." The article also says that JetBlue and Southwest Airlines are at least experimenting with Wi-Fi access aboard, while Delta already offers it.
...we need the cash.
Ooh does this mean i can torrent films whilst on the plane rather than needing to plan my entertainment beforehand
They fitted George Orwell's coffin with rollers so he could turn over more easily years ago.
Virgin america also has WiFi on at least some of their flights.
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Not sure why this article is 'news', its been tried before and even Boeing could not make it cost effective even when dealing with new-build aircraft (no retrofitting needed, lower costs than dealing with airframes that have already come off the production line) - the service was discontinued at the end of 2006.
Interestingly enough, Connexion was a partnership between Boeing, American, United and Delta airlines. I wonder what has changed...
Backelin said the Internet access will be filtered to block pornographic sites -- the airline at first said it wouldn't do that, but relented after hearing complaints from customers and flight attendants. And American won't allow voice-over-Internet phone service, to keep chattering to a minimum.
I don't fly often, but I'm going to start watching the sky for falling AA planes. With all the radio waves in planes introduced by offering wifi, there's no way the planes won't crash. At least, that's what the FAA has been telling us for as long as I can remember. Now that there's a way to make money from using radio devices in the cabin, there doesn't seem to be a problem anymore.
You are going to be disappointed as an international flyer as internet access will only be deployed on domestic MD80s and 737s.
For flights over water, a satellite based system would be required and American Airlines is not using a satellite based system.
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That you can't be without it for a few hours?
This is my sig.
I'd choose the flight with less chance of having someone sitting next to me with their "personal" music player loud enough for me to sing along.
Now we see the violence inherent in the system.
"If I had a choice between two flights both equally good, I'd pick the Wi-Fi enabled one."
:-)
So then, you are saying Wi-Fi is the last thing you would choose to sway your decision?
This dosn't sound like an endorsement to me
Let's hope they ensure that the network is completely separate from the aeroplane's system network.
Interestingly enough, Connexion was a partnership between Boeing, American, United and Delta airlines. I wonder what has changed...
Connexion was primarily on international flights, and used satellites. It was a lot more expensive to install ($500,000 per plane) and significantly more expensive to use.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connexion_by_Boeing
" If I had a choice between two flights both equally good, I'd pick the Wi-Fi enabled one."
Yeah, same here, given a choice between two flights both equally good, I would choose the one with the swimming pool.
if they'll call it "Wi-Fli"?
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
...that it's perfectly safe to operate your wireless devices inside an airplane, as long as you're paying the airline for the pleasure.
what if the wifi causes interference with the planes instruments and the plane crashes? Don't you have to turn all your electronic gear off just for that reason?
They've got a website - http://www.alaskaair.com/as/www2/help/faqs/inflight-broadband.asp - answering questions on their inflight wi-fi and their @alaskaair Twitter account - http://twitter.com/alaskaair - provides daily updates what flight #'s will have wifi.
Mind the gap...
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What good is WiFi when most of the flights I fly on don't give me anything to plug my laptop in to anyways? I'd even consider paying a few dollars for electric service on a flight so I could plug in and use my laptop for the duration of the flight. As it is, my laptop run time on flights is strictly limited to the charge on my batteries before I get on the plane.
And if I'm going to use my latop with WiFi on, that would only drain by battery slightly quicker than without it.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I just flew AA and they charged me $40 for two suitcases. $15 for the first and $25 for the second. I understand what they're trying to do here but the problem is that their flights show up as cheaper on search results. You can think of it as a $40 discount if you don't have any checked baggage or a $25 discount if you only have one checked bag....but the searches should reflect that.
The possibilities are endless.
They must have bought it at the Circuit City clearance sale marked down 50%.
Watch out for blackhat travelers!!
Just put it out there, if your wrong... you learn, if your right, others learn.
AA has been offering wireless on several SFO <-> JFK flights for quite a while. And as another poster pointed out, Virgin is also offering this on many flights.
I hit speedtest.net from both a recent American Airlines flight and a Virgin America flight (Bonus: Verizon Fios and TWC stats, too!).
The connections from the flights were good enough to watch Battlestar Galactica on hulu.com. (I am a big geek.)
In both cases, Internet service was provided by Gogo.
--Sam
Who is going to help the clueless sales dweebs get connected?
Other than the fact that they are expanding the routes on which this is offered, I'm not sure how this is new news. Gogo has been offering service on trans-con American Airlines flights from LA to the east coast for at least 6 months now.
I've used it a few times, and it works OK. Speeds were reasonable (100-150KB download speeds, ping times comparable to mobile broadband, 150-200ms) and I think there was only 1 dead spot for a few minutes during the times that I was logged in. They did not block VPN access so you could conceivably use VoIP once you VPN, but I did not try this.
A link to the actual service (rather than USA today or a blog) would help too:
http://www.gogoinflight.com/
I was on a Southwest flight that was testing this out about a month ago, where it was free for passengers. I ran speakeasy's speed test on it, http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ , and got about 3000 kbps down, and something like 200 kbps up. I ran the test about five minutes after they announced that we could use the service, and it seemed like more than half the people on the plane had laptops out and were playing with the service, even though none of us knew that the service would be available until we got on the plane.
Delta already offers this service on many of its domestic flights. I've been using it for the last few months on my flight from Atlanta to Philly.
I fly GA aircraft and I've left my phone on before. Granted I'm not at 30K feet but I have gotten interference with my headset. It's an iPhone 3G and I think it switched over to EDGE. I was getting the typical EDGE pulse noise like you get on any speakers. So yes there is some issue with cell phones, especially when they drop to EDGE which the 3G ones usually do when they can't get 3G.
People are not that close to the cabin in commercial jets so the problem is less severe than what I was getting.
While I certainly welcome connectivity on the plane, once you offer it, unless you explicitly block Skype, YIM, and others, cellphones are no longer relevant as anyone can use VoIP. That means that people will talk for hours, so blocking cellphones to keep peace and quiet on the plane is no longer a valid reason. Given an opportunity, people will talk for hours, and will do so loudly.
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Connexion was primarily on international flights, and used satellites. It was a lot more expensive to install ($500,000 per plane) and significantly more expensive to use.
I once payed $29.95 for Connexion for a 12 hour flight. Seems about the same as $10 for a domestic flight... maybe even cheaper
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Gogo is old news.
3Mbps/Cell Sector will get saturated quickly. With the number of towers that AirCell (Gogo's owner) originally designed and with Virgin America buying the same service the useful bandwidth per aircraft will decrease. The key for Gogo will be putting more towers up and getting more six sector cells in place instead of the three sector setups they've put in most areas. What they won't tell is that there are gaps in the solution and it will take Gogo/AirCell awhile to completely fill in those gaps with more coverage. Also if you're crossing the Rockies or the Sierra Nevada range expect a bit of a service outage.
There are already things in place to clip bandwidth usage to minimize the effects of streaming and downloading in flight. They've also been putting things into place to prohibit VOIP on the planes but I doubt that they can every successfully clip every aspect of traffic folding and masking and prohibit it.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I'm sorry, sir, we can only offer local area network at this point.
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Actually that's a relatively good price. A good many hotels charge $15-20 for a single hour of internet out there.
So an international flight carries 300 passengers.
Lets say 15% pay for internet access - most of first and business class, plus a few in coach.
45 passengers paying $30 per flight is 1350.
The plane typically makes two flights per day. So that's $2700 per day in revenue.
It takes 185 days to turn over $500,000 cost of fitting. Assuming half the cost is for data, you can still pay for the installation in a year - or a little over is you include downtime.
Even if I'm vastly off in terms of use, it should still pay for itself inside a couple of years which is tiny in terms of the lifespan of a jumbo jet.
I buy & salvage commercial and corporate aircraft. Many systems used on smaller bizjets cost much more in USED condition than $100K. IMHO that's getting it done pretty cost effectively. All commercial / business aircraft parts are astronomically expensive, even for "off the shelf parts" used in other industries (e.x. Amphenol connectors, Textron valves, Eaton parts).
Enlightenment is a pipe dream. So where's the pipe?
Got a lot done and wasn't distracted by e-mail or Web surfing. I'm sure I'd use WiFi if it were available on long flights, but there's also something to be said for uninterrupted concentration time.
Add a 1 to 3% fuel burn penalty for the life of that aircraft and recalculate. Satellite based internet requires a relatively large antenna that bulges off the top of the fuselage. Not aerodynamic, not green, not cheap, and not efficient. Not sure what if any fuel burn penalty there is for cellular based internet antennas.
I know rail and buses aren't terribly popular in the US. But, I'd be a lot more willing to consider slightly slower travel, particularly in the sub-500-mile range (Dallas-SanAntonio-Houston triangle, Chicago to MSP/STL/DET, Northeast corridor, LA/SF/Vegas) if I had power and consistent WiFi.
What happened is that all of the american carriers (American, United, and Delta) pulled out post-9/11 and never met any of their obligations, effectively stranding the service. It limped along a bit from the few carriers that were already using it, but never fully recovered.
What the article fails to mention (or I'm assuming it fails to mention, since I didn't RTFA) is that coach seats are now so small, there are no room for your knees let alone working on a laptop. Flying is now pure hell for the husky gentlemen, unless I spring for the "Economy Plus" seats (when available) that have the legroom of the old normal coach.
There is a huge difference between interference on your headset, which typically has wires running inches within your phone, and placing an electronic device on your antenna.
Yes, yes, harmonic interference is possible and all that, but simply put, your example does not in any way establish the point.
I will also point out I've gotten interference from an ipod on my passenger's headset through the com panel. In other words, an RF device is not required to generate interference though unshielded cables. But interference through the com panel does not mean navigational interference.
Heck, you're more likely to create interference of your whiskey compass by bringing in metallic objects, than you are to any other navigational aid. Should pocket knives be illegal too?
Every time I fly, I bring along a book or a magazine. When I bring out the laptop, I use it for work and I don't need WiFi.
So *this* is what all the hype I've been hearing about "Cloud Computing" is about?
That's a hell of a long flight! Maybe you should take the train next time.
If I had a choice between two flights both equally good, I'd pick the Wi-Fi enabled one.
If they were equally good, wouldn't you be indifferent?
Netbooks have changed. Why pay for wifi when your battery dies in just one hour?
But with a netbook, your batter lasts eight hours...
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I took a Southwest flight from LAX to Sacramento recently that had the WiFi.
As soon as they said they had it, I took an iPhone picture and uploaded it to Flickr, then I turned on my MacBook, went on GMail and looked through my contact list, then proceeded to Google Video Chat with a friend in Washington, DC. I pointed my MacBook camera out the window to prove I was in a flying plane! Interestingly my friend was on a new WiMax service in DC. The quality of service was pretty phenomenal!
All I can say is that WiFi in a plane is awesome, but I suspect not too many people were really using it on my flight, and as it becomes more typical I suspect there will be bandwidth contention.
Will the tubes reach that high?
Boeing's Connexion failed in large part because of bad luck. They introduced their Connexion service back in summer 2001 with large launch customers such as American, Delta, and United Airlines. Unfortunately a few months later you had 9/11 which financially crippled nearly every domestic American airline and brought deep-sixed Connexion's entire business plan. The company struggled to keep it viable for a while, but the small number of foreign airlines and shipping companies wasn't enough; they needed large airlines with heavy business traffic to keep the program viable.
I fly a lot. And the last thing I ever want to hear is someone yakking away for hours on a phone while in flight.
Remember this: if phone use is ever allowed on flights, yak too much and this ex-college nose tackle who can still squat 700 pounds will break your phone in half then reassemble it inside you by shoving one part through your nostrils and the other half up your ass.
...if it gets all those self-important jerks to put their stupid phones away and quit sharing their conversations with everyone on the plane.
I thought you couldn't have phones turn on cause of radio interference...wouldn't Wi-fi be doing the same thing as our phones and electronic devices?? I always knew it was BS, either that or we'll see alot of plane crashes.
Just tunnel via SSH if you want to watch porn... it'll be difficult to do so if the guy in front of you has his seat reclined, however.
No but you are certainly the only country to do that shit with removing shoe, belt, forcing drinking a mother her own milk (at least once) etc....etc...
I just flew back from LA to Zurich last Saturday and yes, my seat was equipped with a power socket!!
The socket is "multinational", you can plug US, Swiss, Italian and German (at least) power plugs.
I'm not sure it is 110V or 220V, I haven't used it.
Frankly I was amazed!
(Un)fortunately I had no need to use it (i.e. did not work on that flight :) )
P.S.: yes, it was business class (Swiss International Airlines)
The price should be included into the ticket.
This complete nice and dining for everything will only hurt them in the long run.
It's like going to a restaurant and having a carpet cleaning fee tacked onto your bill becasue they clean the carpets.
No, that is the CoDB.
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Probably not, as they're much smaller and don't have to track anything, being 35K up. Although as a GA pilot, I know that any disruption across the airfoil will generate drag (it just depends on how much drag is generated).
Yeah, well, we're talking American Airlines here, so that's pretty unlikely.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
This is nice and all but when will they start putting power outlets anywhere besides business and first class?
But with regard to drinking on aircraft, you're a fool if you don't and a fool if you do. A drink will help to settle nervous travellers, but it will also dehydrate you worse than air travel by itself will, and that's considerably. Dehydration = hangover. YMMV and if you're Russian you might not notice.
It's for the tiny motor driving the laptop, honest!
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
I'm glad that they will be charging for this. I don't want to see base ticket prices go any higher.
Wi-Fi would help to pass the time during a flight. However, since domestic flights are typically short, all I need is an mp3 player and a book.
On a flight > 2 hours, I would buy a plane ticket from American for up to $50 more just for the privilege to surf the web during those two hours. There's only so much cached slashdot I can read before I want something live, or responding to emails while on the road, browsing forums, uploading photos or updating my personal website. After the $10 service charge, American has just gotten an extra $60 out of me on what's an essentially fixed cost flight for them.
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The vadge bastards. I thought French IBIS were bad, at 8 euros per day.
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There are two kinds of slashdoters. One kind change their underwear and socks weekly, whether they need to or not. The other kind don't wear any.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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It would have to be way more than worth it to make up for the $35 luggage charge. By the time you figure in the annoyance factor, the AA ticket needs to be at least $50 less than the competition before I would even consider it.... Wi-Fi or no Wi-Fi !
This news, combined with the new Skype application for iPhone, now leads to the inevitable -- the person next to you talking on the "phone" during the whole plane ride.
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