Virgin America Now All Wi-Fi

The plucky carrier Virgin America is first airline with full-fleet Internet access: Virgin America said today that all its aircraft have Aircell's Gogo Inflight Internet service installed. That's marvelous, because you can now book and expect (short equipment problems) to have Wi-Fi on any flight. This is a key moment, despite the size of VA's fleet, as I have been saying for years and years that without an airline offering the expectation that every mainline (non-regional) plane they fly having Internet service, passengers won't adjust their expectations and plans to work (or play) with net access onboard.

On the fleet size issue, VA has 28 planes in service according to a couple of sources I checked, and fly 100 routes a day. This makes them one of the smallest national carriers. Delta, by contrast, has over 300 mainline planes in its Delta contingent, and hundreds more under the Northwest banner. Delta says its about halfway through its efforts, and will be finished in a few months with its deployment.

What will be more interesting to me is when the airlines and Aircell start opening up the service to roaming. It's clear that there will be nothing like fee-free roaming, but I can't see mass usage of this service without business customers and casual travelers that already have Wi-Fi plans being able to get a highly discounted price and have a single login, single bill to their existing plan provider.

(Note that in the linked press release, that's me in the photo from the VA launch in November holding the white laptop up in the middle wearing glasses. I didn't mean to look so grim! I already had a cocktail in me at that point; sleepy is more like it. You can see a rare videocast/TV report I filed from that flight for Boing Boing TV.)