American Airlines today said it has wired the first of 15 domestic aircraft with Internet capabilities, paving the way to install the offering on most of its transcontinental fleet by this summer.
Jack Blumenstein, CEO of Aircell, which is enabling American's connectivity offering, today said American now will enter a testing phase, setting the course for a full rollout on American's Boeing 767-200 fleet within the first six months of this year. Aircell expects to offer the connectivity service to all customers on those planes regardless of class of service, and American said it could expand the offering throughout its domestic U.S. fleet.
Virgin America also is gearing up for its launch of Aircell's inflight Internet offering, which will be integrated with Virgin America's inflight entertainment system in addition to being available on passengers' laptops and handheld devices. Blumenstein said he expects the startup carrier to roll out the service fleetwide this year.
Blumenstein said customers should expect to pay about $12.95 for Internet access on transcontinental flights, and closer to $10 on short-haul service. However, he said the air-to-ground connectivity provider still is fine-tuning pricing, while also exploring monthly or yearly subscriptions and corporate contracts.
Blumenstein said other domestic carriers are exploring Internet access on board, noting that Aircell is in discussions with other major domestic players. "The list of airlines that aren't in the RFP stage is much shorter than the airlines that are," Blumenstein said.
JetBlue Airways last month became the first domestic carrier to offer free, though limited, Wi-Fi availability on one of its aircraft through its LiveTV subsidiary. Meanwhile, Alaska Airlines said it would test Wi-Fi with satellite-based supplier Row 44 this spring with the goal of rolling it out fleetwide. Southwest Airlines also is in the midst of signing a supplier to provide inflight Internet as soon as the end of this year
(BTN, Dec. 17, 2007).