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Mile-high wi-fi takes off on US airlines
American and Virgin to offer in-flight broadband

By Marguerite Reardon

Published: Thursday 13 March 2008

In-flight broadband is coming soon for travellers on some American Airlines and Virgin America flights. But will the companies hit the right price point to attract customers?

Aircell, a company that sells air-to-ground telecommunications equipment to airlines, said this week that its in-flight broadband system will be used on some Virgin America and American Airlines flights originating from San Francisco and Los Angeles to New York and Miami.

American Airlines will initially enable 15 of its 767s with broadband, and eventually it will offer internet connectivity on 500 planes. Virgin plans to provide broadband on all its planes, according to a blog posted on GigaOm.

The new service, called Gogo, will cost $12.95 for cross-country flights and $9.95 for flights lasting three hours or less.

Airlines have been talking about offering in-flight broadband for years. But so far the service hasn't really gotten off the ground. Boeing was the first to come up with a service, called Connexion, which debuted in 2004 on a few international carriers including, Lufthansa, SAS, All Nippon Airways, Japan Airlines, and Singapore Airlines.

But the service was canceled in 2006 when the company was unable to find business among domestic airlines. A big problem with Connexion was that the entire system was bulky and weighed around 400 pounds, making it nearly impossible for it to be used on smaller domestic planes.

Other companies, such as Aircell, which uses a network of some 92 antenna towers across the country to transmit wireless signals to planes flying above, and Row44, which provides in-flight internet service via satellite, have been pushing forward despite Connexion's failure. Both of these companies use Wi-Fi routers inside planes to provide broadband access to passengers.

Several carriers, including American Airlines, Virgin America, Alaska Airlines, and Southwest, have already said they would test broadband service on their planes using one of these two service providers. And in December, JetBlue demonstrated its in-flight broadband on a flight from New York to San Francisco.

Finally, American Airlines and Virgin America are offering a commercial in-flight broadband service.

The true test will be whether passengers actually use the service. And that will depend on several factors. The first is price. How much are people willing to pay for in-flight broadband? Judging from the in-flight phone business, not that much.