Southwest Signs with Row 44

Southwest announced on its blog that it's signed a contract and the next steps have begun for Wi-Fi: This is good news for Row 44 and its investors, as Row 44 has two airlines (Alaska and Southwest) that want its satellite-based Internet service, but until today there was no word of how that was going to proceed for either airline.

On the blog, Southwest's Dave Ridley wrote that the airline will start installations in the second quarter of 2010, and install about 15 aircraft a month from a fleet of 540 with a goal to ramp up to 25 planes a month. That puts them at 2012 on this scheduled for full-fleet rollout.

Cost still hasn't been set. Of course, people would prefer to pay nothing, but Southwest hasn't been consistently low-operating-cost and low-fare by guessing wrong on what people will pay.

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