American Airlines offering in-flight Wi-Fi

Beats rival Delta to it

20 August 2008 17:02 GMT / By Katie Scott

We got all excited about Delta Airlines offering a Wi-Fi for all of its domestic routes by the summer 2009, and now American Airlines has gone and done the same.

Delta has started rolling out the service now and expects all of its domestic mainline fleet of more than 330 planes to have Wi-Fi broadband access in the next year.

But American Airlines have delivered already and is offering Gogo, its Aircell-run service for in-flight internet access, from today.

Says Electronista: "The service is platform-agnostic and provides access to both notebooks as well as handhelds, including explicit support for iPhones as well as certain BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices equipped with the short-range wireless format".

You can't make VoIP calls though, the sound has to be off unless you've got headphones, and of course, if the content you are viewing is deemed offensive to other passengers then you'll have your Wi-Fi switched off.

American Airlines' service costs $13 per flight and is being currently used on Boeing 767-200 planes running flights in either direction connecting New York to Los Angeles, Miami and San Francisco.

The Delta service will cost $9.95 on flights of 3 hours or less and $12.95 on flights of more than 3 hours.

Full tags

Software, Online, Wi-Fi, American Airlines, Delta Airlines