Today is the day that at least some cross-country business travelers find the holy grail of business travel: in-flight wireless broadband.
American Airlines is the first domestic carrier to offer Wi-Fi Internet access to passengers. The Connexion by Boeing service was available on some overseas flights for a while, before it died in August 2006 after the program spent $1 billion over six years.
The difference: Boeing used a satellite backhaul and had heavy equipment. Heavy on a plane is bad (though that's only part of the reason they're charging you extra for your suitcase). The new gogo service - which will be on all of American's 767-200 planes traveling from New York (JFK airport) to Los Angeles and eventually some flights in and out of San Francisco and Miami as well - is lighter and connects to a series of air-to-ground terrestrial towers using a version of EVDO Rev A technology. gogo is run by Aircell. If it works, maybe it'll be on all flights someday.
Today's initial run is going to cost passengers nothing to try, but after the official launch in a couple of weeks the price will be $12.95 for flights over three hours long or $9.95 for under three hours. Passengers can use it for unfiltered Web surfing and email, but not VoIP, which probably wouldn't work well anyway.
Users of the iPass hotspot roaming service don't have to pay extra. iPass has a deal in place with gogo so those with iPassConnect Mobile accounts won't have to pay extra.
American isn't alone in using gogo; Virgin American is also working with the provider to put Wi-Fi on all its jets for a future launch this year. No pricing or other details are yet available. Some Virgin flights already have access points installed, but they're only used by the flight crew.
JetBlue is also trialling an air-to-ground network on a single plane at the moment, called BetaBlue. Any lucky passenger who finds themselves on BetaBlue can try the Wi-Fi. The downside is that it doesn't offer full Web access yet; it's limited to use of Yahoo email and instant messages on laptops, and some services for Blackberrys.
Of course, other companies know when a paradigm shift is coming: Keynamics, maker of the Aviator Laptop Stand, sent out a release this morning about how it has been 'anticipating this historic event' from American Airlines. The Aviator consists of three pieces of molded plastic you can carry flat and configure into a laptop stand specifically designed for seat-back tray tables (or any flat surface). It's $19.99 and comes in standard gray or hot pink to support breast cancer initiatives.
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