Delta to roll out inflight wi-fi, but…
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I’m all for inflight wi-fi. Granted, I have an internet addiction and giving me inflight wi-fi is like handing a bottle of Jim Beam to an alcoholic. But I’ll feed the need for the time being and praise Delta’s recent announcement that they’d be rolling out inflight wi-fi across their domestic fleet.
Delta is joining with Aircell®, a 17-year leader in airborne communications for business and commercial aviation, to install the company’s Mobile Broadband Network on the carrier’s domestic fleet. The system, Gogo™, will enable Delta customers traveling with Wi-Fi enabled devices, such as laptops, smartphones and PDAs, to access the Internet, corporate VPNs, corporate and personal e-mail accounts, as well as SMS texting and instant messaging services. Gogo will be available to customers for a flat fee of $9.95 on flights of three hours or less, and $12.95 on flights of more than three hours.
Sounds good to me. And according to the Gogo site, and confirmed by Scott McCartney, voice calls, such as Skype, will be blocked. I like.
But there are two caveats:
1) Power. No inflight internet is worthwhile if you run out of juice. Will Delta be installing power ports on every flight? Unlike, say, Virgin America, Delta doesn’t have power at every seat. And their announcement doesn’t suggest they’ll be installing it. While installing wifi can be done overnight, adding power takes a lot more effort, time, and weight. In the meantime: Buy a spare battery.
2) Space. If you’re going to open up a laptop, you need room. If someone pushes their seat back, your screen can get jammed into place in the laptop squeeze. Either you’ll need to negotiate with the person in front of you, to prevent them from reclining, or airlines need to add seat pitch to each row. Good luck with the latter.
All in all, I’m happy to hear that Delta is rolling this out, and doing it so aggressively. I’d love to see power, too, but I’m not optimistic. By the end of 2008, 75 planes (starting with MD-88s) will be slated for the upgrade. By the end of 2009, 300 planes should have it. That’s much faster than the JetBlue or American beta-tests.
Related:
- Inflight internet update: Southwest blocks Skype, Continental (hearts) Blackberry
- Feed the Internet addiction: American Airlines will roll out high-speed inflight wi-fi next year
- It’s official: Boeing pulling the plug on its inflight internet service, Connexion
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August 6th, 2008 at 9:15 am |
As much as I would enjoy using the internet on long flights, you do bring up those two great points and I would add one more….$$$$.
By the time you get to your laptop after a snack and all, will you have any money left to afford it?
As much as I like flying with Delta, I think the building that house the “great minds” must be assuming to much fumes or something.
August 7th, 2008 at 1:44 pm |
While you do bring up some good points, I think that point one would evenutally be negated as Delta modernizes the fleet. While they are putting Wi-Fi into the MD-88/90 fleet it is much more complicated to put power ports into the older aircraft in the fleet. I would lay odds that the 777 and 787 (from NWA) would be the first to have the power ports since their architecture would be more condusive to the necessary modifications.
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:21 am |
DL is starting with the MD88 fleet. On those aircraft, due to the length of flights they operate, shouldn’t require in-seat power. A 3-hour flight probably has about 2-hours of usable WiFi time. 2-hours shouldn’t be much of a stretch for any modern laptop with a full charge. When the addition of WiFi makes it to the B757-200 and B767-300 fleets (the longest range aircraft in the DL fleet getting WiFi) then power will be more of an issue, but the fact that most of these aircraft have IFE means in-seat power shouldn’t be as big of an undertaking (though hopefully AC power and not Empower).
That said, I can chug along for about 12 hours on my Dell D630 and 2 9-cells, so even the longest domestic flights won’t pose a problem.