American Leads In Launch Of U.S. Inflight Wireless Internet

American Airlines in August became the first domestic carrier to launch full wireless inflight Internet access, rolling out the service across its 15-plane Boeing 767-200 fleet. Other carriers, including Alaska Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Continental Airlines, Southwest Airlines and Virgin America, are advancing their own plans to bring Wi-Fi to the sky in the coming months.

American said customers traveling between New York and San Francisco, Los Angeles and Miami now can access broadband Wi-Fi services for $12.95 per flight, "enabling passengers to surf the Web, check any e-mail, instant message, access a corporate VPN and more," the carrier said in a statement. American is leveraging the air-to-ground network of inflight connectivity provider Aircell to launch the service.

Delta Air Lines in August also partnered with Aircell to embark on an inflight Internet rollout across its entire mainline domestic fleet. Delta said 75 planes would be wired for the service by year-end, and it plans to outfit more than 330 aircraft for wireless broadband by summer 2009, representing the largest planned rollout of inflight Internet to date. Delta plans to launch the service on its 133-aircraft fleet of MD88/90s, then expand it to the rest of its domestic fleet of Boeing 737s, 757s and 767-300s. Delta is following Aircell's pricing of $9.95 on flights lasting three hours or less and $12.95 on longer flights but "will look at package pricing and subscriptions," said Delta manager of global product development Chris Babb on the carrier's Web site. Aircell's service is limited to the 48 contiguous United States, but Delta expects to expand the service to Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean.

Virgin America plans to roll out Wi-Fi fleetwide by spring 2009, using Aircell's service. A spokesperson said the carrier would begin its first tests and installations in the fall. During the first phase, it will enable customers to access Wi-Fi through such personal devices as laptops, smart phones, PDAs and BlackBerry handheld devices, and the carrier later plans to integrate Internet capabilities into its inflight entertainment system. Virgin America said it has yet to determine the service's pricing structure.

Aircell executive vice president of airline solutions John Happ said prices will "morph" over time.

"We're focusing on the fee-based right now, and in the meantime we're developing other alternatives that you can expect to see in 2009 and beyond," Happ said. Aircell noted the possibility for subscription services and, further down the road, direct corporate relationships. In the meantime, Aircell is working with airline sales forces to tap into the corporate market.

"We're already making plans with our airline partners with respect to their corporate sales organizations to help demonstrate the product and put the value proposition in perspective," Happ said.

Aircell is first to bring full Internet capabilities to the inflight domestic market, but other connectivity providers also have secured deals with U.S. carriers and are ramping up their systems.

Row 44 CEO John Guidon said the company plans to equip its first planes in September with launch customer Alaska Airlines. Guidon said the equipment is "fully qualified, fully certified" and ready for installation. "We want to make sure this technology is absolutely industrial-strength before we let it anywhere near the public," he said.

Guidon said the price point "depends how the service is offered. In some cases, the airlines will determine what the prices will be. But if the airline is not determining the price, then I think Row 44 will be making a price in the $7.99 range for a domestic flight for a laptop. If you're on something like an iPhone or a PDA—and we can tell that, by the way—we'll charge you less, something like $5.99."

Alaska Airlines confirmed that it is "still in the testing phases" with Row 44's satellite-based inflight technology, though the carrier plans to roll out the service to its entire fleet by the end of the fall. Alaska said it has yet to determine pricing for the offering.

Southwest Airlines earlier this year signed a deal to test inflight Internet with Row 44. A spokesperson said Southwest plans to begin testing on four aircraft sometime in the fourth quarter. "Depending on the results of the test, we want to move forward with installing it on all of our aircraft," a spokesperson said.

While its utility remains limited to e-mail and messaging services, JetBlue Airways subsidiary LiveTV this summer announced an agreement to purchase the Verizon Airfone network to bulk up its inflight connectivity platform.

JetBlue late last year rolled out limited Internet capabilities through LiveTV on a single plane. The free service enables connectivity through its seatback televisions, BlackBerrys and laptops. Yet, it can only access a limited number of services, including Yahoo! mail and instant messaging, Microsoft Exchange, Gmail, Windows Live, which includes Hotmail, MSN e-mail accounts, AOL and Amazon.com. A JetBlue spokesperson said the service has yet to move to other planes, though the beta aircraft is "routed on transcontinental flights as often as possible."

Continental Airlines plans to use LiveTV's offering to make inflight Wi-Fi available early next year with an inflight entertainment system on domestic aircraft, "subject to LiveTV being able to offer the service, which is still in the testing phase," the carrier said. Continental plans to offer complimentary LiveTV access to first class customers, and charge $6 for economy passengers.