The flying office: Wi-Fi will soon be available on flights

U.S. airlines are poised to push Internet access into hundreds of planes by the end of 2009, with service available via Wi-Fi as an aircraft rises above 10,000 feet. You'll never be out of touch again, for better or for worse.

The flying office has been in the works for a decade, and it has finally come to fruition with the first of Virgin America's 24 Airbus A319 and A320 aircraft equipped with Wi-Fi for regular passenger use this month. The airline says it expects all its planes to have Internet access by the second quarter of 2009.

Internet access has been available as a pilot test since August on 15 of American Airlines' planes, all cross-country Boeing 767-200s. Delta is planning a fleetwide launch soon, and Air Canada plans to install service that will work while in the U.S. Meanwhile, Alaska, Southwest, and JetBlue have services in various stages of testing or planning.

With the Net everywhere, the digerati may never be able get away from being connected, even if they want to be.

For now, early reviews are positive, even if early users are hard to find.

What Fly-Fi is good for

Gogo, the in-flight provider chosen by Virgin and American, is a service created by longtime aviation-telecommunications firm Aircell. It offers speeds comparable to lower-end DSL: as fast as about 2 megabits per second (Mbps) from the Internet to the plane, and several hundred kilobits per second (Kbps) from the plane to the Internet.

Any device with Wi-Fi built in can access the network, so long as it has a browser to handle the login process. This includes laptops, smartphones (so long as their cellular radio can be turned off), and some gadgets. Virgin America has power and Ethernet between each seat in coach and at every first-class seat.

With 2 Mbps, downloading large e-mail attachments, viewing Web sites that use rich media, watching YouTube and — perhaps — viewing video on other streaming sites, using instant messaging, and other common tasks should work well, more or less.

Can be tedious

Downloading digital movies might be tedious and require too much bandwidth. A standard-definition two-hour film can top 1 gigabyte, which would take an hour of transfer time with no other heavy users. On a red eye, it might work.

Airlines might distribute movies over the local network, however. With a server on the plane, network speeds could be from 20 Mbps to 100 Mbps. With or without videos, having e-mail access alone might be enough of an incentive to use the system.

Craig Furuta, a frequent flyer and government consultant, has used Gogo on American flights. He said via e-mail, "I found it to be great just so the e-mail doesn't pile up."

"E-mail is killer app"

Veteran travel writer Joe Brancatelli, who has written critically of the early hype over in-flight Internet, said he expects that if and when service is widely available, "e-mail is the killer app. The same mentality that drives the BlackBerry is what will drive Internet usage on planes. Staying in touch trumps all for business travelers." Brancatelli hasn't yet used the Gogo service.

I tested Gogo on a press flight Nov. 22 in which Virgin America and Aircell assembled YouTube celebrities, print and online journalists, bloggers, and others on a brief flight that circled around San Francisco International Airport.

It was the worst of circumstances for the companies pumping the new offering because the 130-odd people on board were all trying to use the service at the same time — but it held up supremely well.

My burning question was simply: can I Twitter? Yes. Also instant message, blog, e-mail, and download files; those around me were streaming video like mad.

A bandwidth test I ran during this period of heavy use still showed more than 700 Kbps downstream and 200 Kbps upstream, a remarkable number during heavy use.

If they build it,

will they come?

Aircell isn't the first firm to offer in-flight Internet service. Boeing launched in-flight Wi-Fi with its Connexion service in 2004, but the high cost of adding satellite receivers and other gear to planes didn't mesh well with the state of the airline industry. (Aircell says its installation costs and equipment weight and drag are less than a fifth of Connexion's.)

In 2006, Boeing canceled the service. At that point, it had wound up in just several dozen overwater, long-haul planes, with fees ranging from $10 for one hour to $27 for an entire flight.

Aircell's service uses air-to-ground spectrum formerly reserved for Verizon AirFone and previous aloft phone services that were auctioned off by the FCC in 2006.

License purchased

Aircell purchased a license of three-quarters of the available spectrum. JetBlue's LiveTV in-flight entertainment division bought the other quarter. That's why Aircell can offer something like broadband, while JetBlue has a somewhat more restricted plan.

The service works only over the ground in the U.S., with a network of cell towers beaming upward. Aircell expects to receive regulatory approval eventually for the same service in Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean.

Alaska and Southwest, meanwhile, have said they'll test a satellite-based offering from a company called Row 44. Satellite service is critical for Alaska Airlines with so many routes taking it over the Pacific to Alaska or Mexico. An Alaska spokesperson said the airline might start adding Internet access in early 2009; Southwest didn't respond to a request for comment.

Gogo now costs $9.95 for flights of three hours or shorter, and $12.95 for longer flights.

There's no limit on bandwidth consumed. Aircell executives said recently they expect to offer time-of-day pricing — such as discounted rates for red-eye flights — and other pricing options as the service rolls out to more airlines and aircraft.

While the price may have contributed to Connexion's failure to take hold, the current charges mirror overnight hotel Internet rates and may be more palatable.

Aircell hasn't yet discussed a monthly fixed rate or corporate discounts.

"I would pay for the service for flights longer than three hours ... but not for a two-hour flight," Furuta said.

Shawn King, the host of "Your Mac Life," an Internet radio show, used American's service in October, and wrote via e-mail, "If your business requires Net access or something important is happening while you are in the air, the $12.95 cost is peanuts."

King, who freely admits that he communicates prolifically, noted via Twitter that Internet access was "well worth the money to stave off in-flight boredom."

Your office, everywhere

Being reachable all the time is a utopia for some, a nightmare for others. The lack of voice and video-chat services — airlines are blocking VoIP use — should preserve some semblance of privacy.

And business travelers already know that when they've been out of touch on a cross-country trip, hours of e-mail typically await them on touching down.

In-flight Internet access might just help some travelers regain their equilibrium, and, for others, wile away those crowded, tedious hours.

Glenn Fleishman writes the Practical Mac column in Personal Technology.