Wi-Fi at 29,000 Feet

09Sep09

Today was my first opportunity to travel on a domestic flight in some time.  All of my recent travel has been to either Haiti or Kenya (last 4 trips anyway).  I was intrigued as I boarded when I saw the sign that said that wi-fi was available on my flight to Chicago.

As we reached cruising altitude, I turned on my iPhone, opened up Safari and checked over what the offering was to get online.  Internet access is provided by gogoinflight.com and the only option I had on this flight was a one-time purchase for the duration of the flight for $7.95.  I figured I had about an hour and a half yet so I signed up for the service.

Moments later I was downloading and answering email, updating and uploading a picture to Facebook and checking to see if any of the other owners in my fantasy football league wanted any of my “stud” players.  Just like I was sitting in my house.

Speed was awesome and even uploading a photo taken on my iPhone was pretty snappy.  I didn’t do a speed test because I didn’t see a reason to as I was satisfied.

A couple of things…

If you sign up on your mobile device and want to switch over to your laptop, you can do it but you have to pay the fee again.  This was explained very plainly when I signed up but I would have liked to have switched over.  Also $7.95 is kind of steep for an hour or so of internet time unless you really need it for work.  It would be great if gogoinflight.com could partner with some of the internet providers in the airports (such as Boingo) to carry over the service while you are on the ground since most people have a layover anyway.

Bottom line is that I would probably ignore this offering in the future unless my flight was around 3 hours or so.  Maybe they should consider partnering with companies like AT&T/Verizon who has a large customer base using iPhones and Blackberries.

Or if I get some free, promotional access through gogoinflight.com for pimping their service.

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