American Ushers in WiFi-Friendly Skies

We warned you months ago that in-flight WiFi was coming, and now it's here. This morning American Airlines launched airborne broadband service on 15 nonstop transcontinental flights, allowing passengers to send e-mail, chat by IM and browse the Internet at 36,000 feet. For $12.95, you can spend six hours surfing the web instead of watching a lame romantic comedy.

American and AirCell, the company responsible for the technology behind the system called GoGo, hailed it as a Great Day In History, with AirCell chief executive Blemenstein proclaiming, "today the days of being cut off from the rest of the world while in the air become history."

Sounds to us like a nice way of saying the last refuge from your boss has been breached.

American isn't the only airline jumping on the in-flight Internet bandwagon, which could bring cash-strapped carriers as much as $1 billion by 2012. Of course, the industry's been promising us for four years that we'd be able to read Autopia from six miles up, and some doubters went so far as to call airplanes "the last, possibly unconquerable, Internet frontier." Looks like that frontier's finally been conquered.

JetBlue reminds everyone that it offers limited WiFi through its LiveTV set-up and hopes its purchase of Verizon's Airfone network will expand the system's capabilities, but American is the first to bring full-on broadband to the sky. Delta plans to offer essentially the same service American's using, and Southwest is testing a system developed by the California company Row 44. Just about everyone else with an airworthy plane is scrambling to catch up.

Two technologies are fighting for airborne WiFi supremacy in the skies. The AirCell system American went with is an air-to-ground system that transmits signals from ground stations to airborne aircraft. Because it uses cell towers that are already built, it's relatively cheap but also ... buffering ... buffering ... a bit slow.

Satellite systems use a data transceiver/router, a satellite antenna and 802.11b access points. It works anywhere, including over water, but it's more expensive. When airlines are chucking beverage carts, getting rid of glasses and pulling magazines out of their planes to save money, you've got to think spending big money on wireless systems isn't something they're in a position to do.

Although the industry is racing to bring the World Wide Web to seat 17D, not everyone thinks it's worth the trouble. John Jackson, head of North American sales and marketing for Korean Airlines says the airline's test of on-board WiFi was met by a collective yawn. He suspects passengers on trans-oceanic slogs would rather sleep, read or even take a shower than waste time checking e-mail or updating their Facebook page.

Of course, airlines aren't offering these services just to be nice. At $12.95 a pop, American Airlines could rake in some big cash if onboard Internet is a success. For an industry charging two bucks for a Coke, it's no surprise that there's a profit motive involved.