In-Flight WiFi Coming to American Airlines and Virgin America
The airline industry rumor mill is churning at full speed with what appears to be legitimate plans for both American Airlines and Virgin America to soon offer in-flight WiFi to customers traveling by air. The offering appears to be the latest in a series of moves to offset the rising fuel costs and ensuing decreasing profit margins which airlines worldwide are facing. Earlier moves include baggage surcharges on second checked bags by many airlines and a luggage surcharge on a traveler’s first checked bag by American Airlines.
AA is initially offering the service on select routes. As of now, the plans are to offer travelers in-flight WiFi on flights to and from Los Angeles (LAX), New York (JFK), San Francisco (SFO) and Miami (MIA); whereas VA will be offering the service on its entire fleet. An official announcement from AA is expected this week, while VA may fine tune it’s own service and concentrate on providing a better value to those traveling on it’s service rather than trying to be first out of the gate.
No indication has been given yet as to the price structure for in-flight WiFi and I was unable to find any definitive pricing information on the home page of Denver based Gogo, the service provider for both AA, VA and possibly JetBlue at a later date. From Gogo’s website:
Once the aircraft has reached 10,000 feet, users can simply turn on their Wi-Fi enabled laptops, smartphones or PDAs, open their browsers and be directed to the Gogo portal page where they sign up and begin surfing. Gogo is powered by the Aircell ® Air-To-Ground (ATG) Broadband System, which runs over Aircell’s exclusive nationwide network, and will be launching on American Airlines ® , Virgin America ® and other airlines later this year.
Airlines have done little in the past to squeeze me for the extras. I’m the kind of guy who will bring a bag of snack mix from some discount shopping warehouse, fill up my cancer-causing water bottle or employ pretty much any of a whole host of other frugal traveler tricks to avoid adding to the airlines’ coffers, but I’ll tell you what, I’m an internet junkie of epic proportions and with this little trick, the airlines are likely to finally get more of my money.
