First Experience with In-Flight Internet

Filed in archive Business Tips on November 23, 2009

© lrargerich


A month or so ago I wrote about how a number of airlines are now providing wifi on their planes. Last week I got to actually experience this for the first time. It was a nice little extra to my vacation.

I was on an American Airlines flight from Dallas, TX to Las Vegas, NV and just settling in after take-off when the flight attendant came on the intercom and told us that we could turn back on our electronic devices and we could also now access the plane's internet connection. My friend who was flying with me said, "Wait, what? Did she say we could use the internet?" And I countered with, "Well, yes, but I'm pretty sure that AA has a fee, or that the access is limited." She nodded and went back to sleep.

This is the story of my brief brush with in-plane wifi. However, when I got home I immediately looked up what AA offered in its wifi package since I was not about to pay a fee for my internet access during the flight. Turns out that I was completely right. There is "complimentary" access to some pages such as AA.com, The Wall Street Journal and Frommers destinations. For a fee (not listed on AA's site) you can have unlimited access, including email and VPN. There are some preconditions of course, the wifi is only available within 100 miles of the U. S. currently.

My question was price point. Neither AA or Gogo (AA's wifi provider) put any costs or even estimates anywhere on their site. However, after a little digging, I found that flights for less than three hours run around $10. Which doesn't sound bad unless you consider how much you pay for wifi in a month. It will be interesting to see people will willing pay that amount just to click around during their two hours in the air or not.

Have you had the opportunity to experience in-flight wifi yet? Would you pay $10 for 2 hours of internet on your plane?