American Launches In-Flight Broadband Pilot

Welcome back, mile-high Wi-Fi: American Airlines has turned on Internet service in its fleet of 15 767-200s today. These aircraft ply routes between New York’s JFK and three cities: San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Miami. Service is $13 per flight, and bandwidth is expected to be 1.5 Mbps (uncompressed) upstream and downstream, although the service provider, Aircell, claims some advantages above that.

This is a big day for Aircell, which spent tens of millions to acquire the exclusive spectrum license that allows them to shoot Mbps to and from planes. My big question will be whether coverage remains seamless across an entire flight—how often one has to reconnect their VPN would be a big issue. If Aircell has architected the network correctly, passengers should never be reassigned an IP address, and connections shouldn’t be dropped even if there’s a hiccup in air-to-ground communication.

I’ve covered in-flight broadband for several years, and I’ve been wondering lately whether we’d be waiting until 2009 to see real production service. American is calling this a 3-to-6 month pilot to see what their passengers think. Just yesterday, I wrote up veteran travel writer Joe Brancatelli’s frustration with the lack of information and some misinformation about in-flight broadband.

You can read more background on American’s plans and Aircell’s technology in a post I wrote for BoingBoing on 24-June-2008.

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