Airlines don’t officially compete on being the most efficient at stripping away your remaining tatters of dignity. No, the new battleground is in-flight Wi-Fi. I’m somehow unsurprised the worst airline in the country is winning.
https://gizmodo.com/live-in-air-10-things-you-need-to-know-about-in-flight-5096868
That’s right, AirTran is winning on two fronts. AirTran will be the first carrier to offer Wi-Fi on every single flight (granted, they’re a smaller airline, so it’s a much smaller feat than Delta is facing). And they charge a (slightly) reduced rate of $8 for using just your iPhone or BlackBerry on Wi-Fi, not the full $10 that’s the going rate for flights under 3 hours.
Still, that little airlines like AirTran are ponying up is good for competition in one sense—the day before, Delta announced that half of their fleet had Wi-Fi and the rest will by September, a little ahead of schedule. And American Airlines is busy outfitting their fleet, too.
https://gizmodo.com/deltas-bringing-in-flight-wi-fi-to-its-entire-u-s-flee-5033178
But the NYT raises a few sobering points about in-flight Wi-Fi: There’s basically no evidence there’s huge demand for the pricey service (nerds don’t constitute huge demand and even some of them are skeptical, see point #1). Meaning the $100,000-per-plane systems could hobble the already gimply airline industry even more.
https://gizmodo.com/opinion-in-flight-wi-fi-is-a-bad-bad-thing-5097789
Also, many flights, unlike Virgin, don’t have electrical outlets. Not to mention all the other stuff, like crappy bandwidth and the like. Still, I think the first flight I’m on with Wi-Fi, I’m going to at least try it. [NYT via ZDNet]
https://gizmodo.com/live-in-air-10-things-you-need-to-know-about-in-flight-5096868
