Delta bringing Wi-Fi access to entire domestic fleet

Jared Atchison (jared) Delta is joining with Aircell, a 17-year leader in airborne communications for business and commercial aviation, to install the company’s Mobile Broadband Network on the carrier’s domestic fleet.

August 5, 2008 11:01 AM ET in News,

In 2007, Virgin American unofficially became a geek’s favorite airline. Their planes featured in-seat LCDs, passenger-to-passenger chat, movies, games, podcasts, and more.

Today Delta upped the ante and announced something even Virgin America doesn’t offer yet – in flight broadband Wi-Fi.

That’s right, in the near future you will be able to make crude jokes on IRC, troll 4chan, and read xkcd from 30,000+ feet in the air.

Delta is joining with Aircell®, a 17-year leader in airborne communications for business and commercial aviation, to install the company’s Mobile Broadband Network on the carrier’s domestic fleet. The system, Gogo™, will enable Delta customers traveling with Wi-Fi enabled devices, such as laptops, smartphones and PDAs, to access the Internet, corporate VPNs, corporate and personal e-mail accounts, as well as SMS texting and instant messaging services. Gogo will be available to customers for a flat fee of $9.95 on flights of three hours or less, and $12.95 on flights of more than three hours.

Plane upgrades are set to start ASAP and Delta expects to have their entire mainstream fleet upgraded by mid-2009.

6 Comments:

  1. Lincoln
    5 Aug '08, 3:31 pm

    OOoooohhh... maybe NW will be following suit? Hope?

    This can't become industry-wide fast enough.

  2. TvManPwns
    5 Aug '08, 4:39 pm

    Here's hoping this becomes standard in every airline. (There goes a good nights rest on overnight flights)

  3. Snarkasm
    5 Aug '08, 4:41 pm

    Yes, I am stupid and worthless.

  4. RyderOCZ
    5 Aug '08, 4:43 pm
    Quoting Snarkasm

    For the modest charge of $8 per kilobyte.

    Come on, they're charging for peanuts and blankets now. You really think this will be free?

    Price is already in the blurb that Jared quoted.

    9.95 for flights 3 hours and under.
    12.95 for flights over 3 hours.

    Pretty sure nobody thought it would be free.....except you

  5. TvManPwns
    5 Aug '08, 4:46 pm
    Quoting Snarkasm

    You really think this will be free?

    No one said anything about this being free. But for a charge of $13 for any flight over 3 hours, thats something I would be willing to pay to be able to entertain myself on an otherwise dull flight.

    //Edit: Snap, RyderOCZ beat me to it!

  6. Black Hawk
    5 Aug '08, 6:47 pm

    I wonder what sites they'll block and what kind of speed they'll give. If it's good enough speed you could easily use Hulu and watch movies or shows but that would cut in to their revenue. I wonder how the latency would be like. Now all he need are AC plugs in each seat or row.

Troll-free since 2003 ®