American Airlines To Offer Wi-Fi In Planes

Firmafest writes "In USA Today there's a scoop that American Airlines will offer Wi-Fi on domestic flights. Price is approx. $10 to get connected. Being a frequent international flyer I hope this will catch on. The LA Times reports that the cost is about $100,000 to equip a plane. While that number seems high, it will probably be worth it. If I had a choice between two flights both equally good, I'd pick the Wi-Fi enabled one." The article also says that JetBlue and Southwest Airlines are at least experimenting with Wi-Fi access aboard, while Delta already offers it.

Boeing tried this with Connexion. And failed.

[Richard_at_work]

Not sure why this article is 'news', its been tried before and even Boeing could not make it cost effective even when dealing with new-build aircraft (no retrofitting needed, lower costs than dealing with airframes that have already come off the production line) - the service was discontinued at the end of 2006.

Interestingly enough, Connexion was a partnership between Boeing, American, United and Delta airlines. I wonder what has changed...

Re:DANGER DANGER

[sam0737]

I think there is a ban for other reasons. Another legitimate reason I heard is about cell-phone jumping around the cell-tower because all cell grid looks similarity poor, almost the same SNR from 30000 feet, and the cell phone and network will go crazy in switching.

When did your computer crash last time when your cell phone rings right next to it? None for me.
I know airplane has a lot more analog device, but with Wifi, which its active transmission power is like hundreds time smaller than the cell, and being much far away from the important and properly shield cables, the chance of messing something up by Wifi is much smaller I guess.

http://www.avaate.org/article.php3?id_article=1007 [avaate.org]
It's like banning cell phone in train because of Pacemaker? Recommending 22 meters away from pacemaker when using cell phone? I personally havn't seen a news reporting pacemaker malfunction due to cell phone usage...Last time I read the pacemaker manual from my grandma 10 years ago, it was just recommending using cellphone with your opposite ear (right ear usually), keep 30cm away from the pacemaker and that's it.

So crashing a plane? Far from it I would say.

Not particularly useful

[damn_registrars]

What good is WiFi when most of the flights I fly on don't give me anything to plug my laptop in to anyways? I'd even consider paying a few dollars for electric service on a flight so I could plug in and use my laptop for the duration of the flight. As it is, my laptop run time on flights is strictly limited to the charge on my batteries before I get on the plane.

And if I'm going to use my latop with WiFi on, that would only drain by battery slightly quicker than without it.

Implications

[eric02138]

AA is going to have to make policies surrounding a variety of issues like:

• How is AA going to prevent me from setting up my Meraki repeater [meraki.com] once I'm aboard and start re-selling their service for a lower price?
• Are people going to be able to access Skype? How loud will they be allowed to talk before I am allowed to garotte them with my $4 headphones?
• If the engines on the plane fail, will I be blocked from twittering "Ahhh! Gonna die!"?

The possibilities are endless.

Re:So, suddenly it seems...

[Shakrai]

My guess is that one reason it costs $100k per plane to install this system is that part of the installation is doing the tests to insure that 802.11 doesn't interfere with any of the plane's systems.

I had a cross country flight a few years back with some friends. We created an ad-hoc network and played Worms World Party [wikipedia.org] for about half of the flight. Amazingly enough the airplane didn't crash.....

Southwest's test program speeds

[randomchicagomac]

I was on a Southwest flight that was testing this out about a month ago, where it was free for passengers. I ran speakeasy's speed test on it, http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ [speakeasy.net] , and got about 3000 kbps down, and something like 200 kbps up. I ran the test about five minutes after they announced that we could use the service, and it seemed like more than half the people on the plane had laptops out and were playing with the service, even though none of us knew that the service would be available until we got on the plane.

Re:Torrent

[morgan_greywolf]

Not exactly. Generally, all of the airspace over a territory is within the jurisdiction of that terrority. However, at least in the United States, the federal government has sole jurisdiction over the navigable airways; state jurisdiction does not apply. There's a very interesting blog article about airspace jurisdiction [kentlaw.edu], written about 1 year and half ago on a college legal blog.

I believe the airspace over international waters, is treated exactly like the international waters themselves.

IANAL, TINLA, etc.

Re:Avoid American Airlines

[berashith]

Exactly. I flew yesterday, and only due to the potential charge did I carry on my bag. My laptop bag was packed to the gills also. So many people did this exact same thing that 9 or 10 of them had to check their carry on because there was no more room anywhere on the plane. The lack of space was verified by the flight attendants stalking the aisles for about 45 minutes re-arranging bags in the overhead bins.

I spent 1.5 hours boarding a flight that was in the air for 1.5 hours.

The policy may not seem self defeating to the execs, but I will not be a return customer on airlines that force this type of behavior.

Re:Not particularly useful

[KingPrad]

What do you consider normal? I have an HP notebook with 12" screen. With the 9-cell battery I can go 8 hours easily with wifi on doing work in Eclipse and running some server software. It's a standard Core2 system, not an Atom-based netbook. There are some laptops out there with great battery life. I realize most companies give developers more powerful laptops with bigger screens. But if you travel a lot it's worth having a lighter, smaller laptop with twice the battery life.

Re:DANGER DANGER

[annerajb]

now to my real exprience they always say to turn off ipods and eletronic devices on planes i never turn my ipod off so far been in 5 flights with it like that. and i even saw a guy once talking on his cellphone while the plane took off the runway.

Re:Please turn on your electronics?

[Firehed]

You can bet just about any and every business traveler will use it. And while I can't exactly claim to be an air traffic controller, I can't see it taking years to rack up 200 flights.

Re:Avoid American Airlines

[Idiomatick]

Unless I'm moving I'll never need 2 checked-bags. I'd be shocked if I needed one. The max bag size for carry-on (you are allowed 2) Should be fine for 2weeks of travel (I go somewhere with 1 and return with 2 usually)

Re:Avoid American Airlines

[Renraku]

You got it easy.

I flew US Airways. I got charged $15 for my checked bag. I also have a laptop bag which can go under the seat, and a backpack which takes up very little room in the overhead.

Several people each flight brought two large bags that each took up over half of an overhead bin, and then argued with the flight attendants for 5-10 minutes about how they should be allowed to bring as much as they want on the plane. This held up my flights for several minutes each, that WOULD have left a few minutes early.

Personally I'd rather pay the damn $15 than look like a douchebag and hold up a flight with 50+ people on it.

Then there's the people that bring bags that will NOT fit in an overhead, and hold up the boarding process trying to fit it in an overhead. We went over this shit in first grade. You know, the little game where you put the shaped blocks in the correctly shaped holes? Yeah, these people all fail that game.