This week, American Airlines announced its decision to filter out inflight pornographic Internet content. But if you’re flying on American’s flight 1960, or others like it, the restriction could be meaningless.
American has chosen Aircell’s “Gogo” service. It’s an “air-to-ground” system that relies on a network of 92 towers installed across the continental US. As a land based system, it doesn’t work over water, far from shore, and that may be a problem for some of American’s domestic flights.
Flights like 1960, between Houston and Miami, are flown entirely over water between Texas and Florida. Flights like 1165, between New York and Miami, generally fly over water from northern South Carolina until they reach southern Florida. It remains to be seen if the land towers used to provide Internet to those flights are able to reliably reach the aircraft while they’re over water, and provide acceptable broadband speeds.
American, Delta Air Lines, and Virgin America have all chosen Aircell’s “Gogo” service. Air Canada recently announced a deal with Aircell, but until towers are installed in Canada, the service will be unavailable on their aircraft. Continental, jetBlue and Frontier have chosen LiveTV, another air-to-ground Internet provider, to supply their inflight Internet needs. It appears as though the offering of LiveTV will be more limited than Gogo.
Alaska and Southwest have chosen Row 44, a satellite system Internet provider. Row 44 has the ability to to provide Internet service over land and sea. They use the Hughes Satellite Network System to provide Internet to their airline customers.
Neither United Airlines nor US Airways have announced definitive Internet service plans.
So far, American Airlines has Internet services only on its 767-200 aircraft flying between NYC and San Francisco, Miami and Los Angeles, which started on August 20th as part of a three- to six-month trial. Gogo service costs passengers $12.95 (the rate for flights over 3 hours) on American. Currently, there is no word about how the test is going. I’m sure Delta and Virgin are closely monitoring the results.
Walt Mossberg, who writes the Personal Technology column in the Wall Street Journal, tested the Gogo service on a special flight from San Francisco to Denver this past summer. He evaluated the service using Dell and Apple laptops, a BlackBerry, a Windows Mobile phone and an iPhone. He tested email, Instant Messaging, Web Browsing and downloaded various files and videos, as well as every Internet function on the iPhone, Wi-Fi-equipped BlackBerry and Windows Mobile phone.
He reported that all Internet services provided by Gogo worked, and the Internet’s speed was what you get on a typical cellular broadband service, or a slow home DSL line, with the most typical speeds hovering between 500 and 600 kbps. For limited web access and certainly email, that sounds serviceable to me.
The speed of the Gogo service depends on the number of users simultaneously accessing the aircraft’s WiFi network. Row 44, the satellite inflight Internet access provider, claims they will provide significantly greater overall Internet capacity on each aircraft, and thus faster speeds to each passenger accessing the network.
Gogo works with smartphones and other handheld devices equipped with WiFi, and provides a full range of Internet services, but doesn’t support cellular voice services. American blocks the use of VoIP (voice over Internet telephone service) on the Internet in its planes. At this time it is unclear what services will be offered by LiveTV.
Row 44’s system will offer its customers faster broadband connectivity than Gogo’s current offering, and can include full internet access, VoIP services, and cell phone roaming (via pico-cells in markets with appropriate regulation). So far neither Alaska nor Southwest seems inclined to offer VoIP or cell phone voice services.
Meanwhile, American, responding to a request from The Association of Professional Flight Attendants has decided to restrict inflight access to pornography on the Internet, although during its tests, American did not experience any reported incidents of customers viewing inappropriate content via the Gogo service. Personally, I think it’s a wise decision. Delta has announced the same restriction. Flight attendants have enough to do without having to be the porn police.
If I were an airline manager, I would permanently ban all inflight voice communications to eliminate Flight Attendants from having to be the “incessant chatter” telephone police. Train travelers fill up Amtrak’s “Quiet Cars” rapidly for good reason. The din in the remainder of the train from cell phone usage can be daunting at times.
Airline passengers have been very definite about this subject. Survey after survey shows that almost three-fourths of all airline passengers want cell phone usage banned on airplanes. They don’t want anyone prattling on in the seat next to them.
Over time, I believe the airlines will have to impose other restrictions. Personal entertainment devices such as iPods and DVD players have needed headphones to listen to music, videos or movies, but laptop computers have their own speakers. To date, laptops haven’t been much of a problem, as most people have understood they need to use headphones with them so they don’t disturb fellow passengers, although I have been on a few flights where a flight attendant has had to insist the laptop speakers were muted. There will be a lot of additional available entertainment when passengers have Internet access. The airlines should make it clear now that all audio is required to be confined to headphones.
One problem many will encounter on transcontinental flights is that the typical battery life of laptop computers will not permit computer use for the duration of the flight, especially due to the extra power consumed by the computer’s WiFi card when connected to the inflight aircraft network. If you’re not at a seat with a power outlet, or if you don’t have the proper plug for the plane, you’d better bring an extra battery if you plan to fully use your inflight Internet connection.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
If I were an airline manager, I would permanently ban all inflight voice communications to eliminate Flight Attendants from having to be the “incessant chatter” telephone police. Train travelers fill up Amtrak’s “Quiet Cars” rapidly for good reason. The din in the remainder of the train from cell phone usage can be daunting at times.
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THANK YOU. Enforcing Common Courtesy is apparently OFFENSIVE to some passengers. We already TELL YOU when to board, sit, drink, give service items back, stow your bag, turn off your devices, etc. It’s ENDLESS. We butt heads with some big ego’s out there and some who dont think the RULES apply to them.
Years ago, airlines tossed the idea of “gambling” onboard. AFA, the Association of Flight Attendants was all over that. What a way to induce Air Rage, dont ya think? (loosing money inflight, who would they take it out on?)
I was on one of Continental’s 757′s last week LAX to EWR. Every seat in coach had a “standard” US power outlet, in addition to the personalized IFE. Five hours “flew” by as I watched nearly three moves while I wrote ten emails.
Aren’t the prices charged by the airlines pornographic in themselves. Are the add-ons classified as phornographic?
I love the idea of being able to surf the internet whilst on a flight; the thought of phones well that just makes me rant. The idea of sitting next to someone who is watching pornographic material just makes me want to be sick.
Ok, I am not a prude but come on have some considerating for the people around you. If your in the surroundings of your own home you can do what the hell you want to to do, but on a plane, its a definate no-no in my opinion.
I like the idea of power outlet availability — yes, indeed, that would make the hours “fly” by. Now that seat selection has become an a la carte choice, as well, it would be nice if the airlines advertised which seats have the electronics boxes below them, reducing (further) the available leg room in coach. I’d pay to know that.
Hi Prof B.
There are a number of web sites with detailed seating charts for the airlines. While they are sometimes a little behind the changes some airlines have been recently making in their seating, in general, they are highly accurate.
My favorite seating chart website is SeatGuru.com. I find they are generally the most reliable.
By the way, you’ll need to know what kind of power outlet is on the plane you’ll be flying. They’re all not the same. You may need to purchase a specific adapter.
I would also suggest to anyone needing this or similar kinds of information, to become a member and participate in our Forums, Talking Travelers.