American Airlines launches in-flight Wi-Fi
American Airlines will be offering Wi-Fi on 15 of its 767-200 airplanes that fly cross country.
(Credit: American Airlines)American Airlines passengers will now have Wi-Fi access on some flights.
The airline said Wednesday that it has finally launched its in-flight Internet access service via Wi-Fi on 15 of its 767-200 airplanes. The service, called Gogo, will be offered on nonstop flights between New York and San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles, and New York and Miami. The cost is $12.95 per flight. Passengers will be able to sign up when they boot up their browsers.
The airline will be restricting the use of voice over IP services, such as Skype, and it will still restrict the use of cell phones in flight.
Gogo is a service offered by Aircell, which is also providing Wi-Fi access to Delta Air Lines planes. Earlier this month, Delta said it was outfitting all of its domestic fleet with Wi-Fi by the middle of next year. Virgin America, which is also using Aircell's Gogo service, will launch its service by the end of the year, the company has said.
And JetBlue Airways is testing its Wi-Fi access on routes between San Francisco and New York. Southwest Airlines and Alaska Airlines are also testing in-flight Wi-Fi. And others such as United Airlines are considering offering Wi-Fi, but it hasn't announced tests or a commercial launch.
Aircell's pricing is uniform across all the airlines that use it. The company charges $9.95 for flights of three hours or less. And it's $12.95 for all flights over three hours. Initially, American Airlines will only be offering Wi-Fi on coast-to-coast flights.
Marguerite Reardon has been a CNET News reporter since 2004, covering cell phone services, broadband, citywide Wi-Fi, the Net neutrality debate, as well as the ongoing consolidation of the phone companies. E-mail Maggie. 
No.
There are, however, already airlines in Europe who are trying to remove the mobile phone ban from flights (sorry, couldn't find an article to link to).
In short, it's stupid, that's why.
if you noticed that voip is blocked. cellphones are forbidden because people are pretty much potty trained apes, it is already very loud in the plane with the engine and wind noise, but if you add a bunch of idiots who dont realize that no matter how much they yell, the person on the other end of the line wont hear them any louder, no one will come out of that plane still sane. and u shouldnt forget the families with babies... just give a little sleeping medicine to your baby before the flight to make it easier on both the baby and everyone else on the flight.
air travel is getting worse and worse everyday, the security checks, lines, prices, delays, cancelled flights.. crying babies. please don't add cellphones to the list.
BTW, cellphones is going to effect the on-board flight instruments as much as it effects the gps on your car, not any more than that. even if the devices use the same frequencies as the cellphones, preventing it would just take shielding the equipment with the same material used on speaker cables, which i am pretty sure they are already shielded.
Either you've never used a GSM phone, or you're ignorant of the facts; wiring looms can and do amplify radiated energy. Would you be willing to bet the lives of 300 people on the safety of using a cell phone at 35,000 feet?
Here's a hint: good luck hitting any towers from there anyway; you'd have to have a cellular repeater on board for both GSM and CDMA. One reason they want your cell phone powered off is that at altitude, the phone goes into its highest power seek mode looking for towers - which further increases the small chance of interference.
Anthony Kraudelt
3102 Lilac Haze Street
Las Vegas, NV 89147
If AA implemented any real security, I will eat my hat!
If the system is up enough to be usable, I might fire up a VM to connect to it.
Or I could use my Macbook or the Touch. Those don't require any security precautions at all.
It depends on what phone you have, some will work at 28,000 feet.
As for cell phones on planes, I do know that on a recent flight from NYC to San Fran, we were on the plane for a few hours waiting to take off (JFK is awful) and the pilot asked for phones to be turned off because they were interfering with ground communications. That's probably the real issue, not that it will crash the plane, but that the signal (especially of 50-100 phones at once) could interfere with communications.
Cell phones and wifi use entirely different types of radio waves. The cell phone has a much shorter wavelength, and therefore much higher energy. Otherwise your wifi would reach as far as a cell tower!
yo quiero viajar a mi pais pero los pasajes estan muy caros me pueden ayudar ?
- by JohnPentTexas August 29, 2009 10:32 PM PDT
- I flew from Las Vegas to Dallas on 8/28 using this WIFI on American Airlines. It was incredible. I expected a fading signal, poor performance and an overall miserable experience. I was very wrong. Speed tests on my Iphone were 3800k. I used just my iphone as my 17 inch lap was not a real option in the tiny space in front of me. I - illegally - tested my SKYPE and called my wife. It was a quickie test because I could see a few others on the flight took notice. (Tip - get a window seat if you are going to do that telephone call!) Instant messengers work, I used my GOOGLE SMS through a jailbreak app for Google Voice, I emailed with attachments in flight (pictures of the flight), etc. It was worth the $7.95 to have three hours connected. I notice a few others get out the credit card and login. Everyone seemed to be doing instant messengers as was I. I can tell you I am not the biggest American Airlines fan because of long runway delays sitting in the plane, but this is absolutely going to make me fly AA from now on. Hope all their planes have it. Hope they get a monthly fee, as a short hop would not be worth 7.95.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(25 Comments)