Exhaustive Summary of In-Flight Filtering

Hats off to Harrit Baskas, MSNBC travel writer, for this thorough examination of in-flight filtering: Baskas didn’t just make a couple calls, she did the footwork (uh, by phone) to find out precisely how each airline that’s offering or planning in-flight full or partial Internet access will or won’t filter content. Tremendously good work here, and the illustration is just perfect.

Let me just bloggishly crib from her, while suggesting you read the whole run down. American and Delta, as we already know, plan to engage in some limited filtering, seemingly to prevent egregious and obvious Web sites from being viewed. Given that there are a million billion porn sites, I’m not sure how that will work.

Southwest will filter, “much like you have a filter at work,” which probably means excessively.

Continental will only offer email and messaging, so they don’t need to yet.

Virgin doesn’t currently filter any entertainment content, and isn’t planning Internet filtering. That does not surprise me. The various Virgin airlines treat their passengers like capable adults, possibly too much so.

Air Canada and Alaska are both examining the options.

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