I hear rumors that Airlines have started to have Wi-Fi on their flights. While I have yet to prove this, it's an interesting concept. Of course I'm joking about it being a rumor and yes airlines are working quickly (not quickly enough) to offer inflight Wi-Fi. I fly Delta (formally NWA) probably 99% of the time.Although Delta as a company has been offering Wi-Fi on several flights for months, I have yet to fly one of those flights. This is mostly due to the fact that although Delta has acquired NWA, the planes themselves are still the old NWA planes and will likely be the last ones in the fleet to be upgraded.
What I have seen is in flight USB power
Although inflight Wi-Fi remains an urban legend for the most part for me, on a recent flight I got upgraded and the flight not only had power at the seat for laptops and such, there was even a separate USB power port. Wow! So simple, yet it remains to be a rare thing in 2010. I would dare say that 100% of the cellphones and smartphones being sold today all can be charged over USB. USB power is also only 5 volts. So it would seem like a no brainer to offer these ports more widespread throughout the airline industry.
Note to all airlines
Travel is already hard enough. Anything you do to make the flight more enjoyable or productive makes a difference. Your motto doesn't have to be "We're not happy until you're not happy". You can do things like give us in flight power and WiFi to at least keep us distracted from the general discomfort of your seats and cramped quarters. Yes, I'm willing to pay extra for these things and hey, that can help your bottom line too.
For a great site to see not only the best seat, but what's available at your seat go to Seatguru.com.
Delta's last Wi-Fi Update
Check out the Delta Blog here.
I too saw a usb port on my economy flight to the UK with Qatar. I was able to use my ipod touch for the whole journey, fantastic.
I flew on a Qantas Airbus 330-200 (economy) on Friday that had been in service for 5-days, and can confirm it had added in-flight USB power in the head-rest in front of me 🙂 However that’s all… no power points or other treats for the workin’ traveler (other than a slightly larger VOD touch-screen).
So things are slowly changing 🙂 Yay!
Cari
I flew Delta a couple of weeks ago and purchased a 24 hour WIFI connection package. The connection speed was good and the flight time went by quickly. I will definitely buy the WIFI connection time again the next time I fly Delta.
Finally!! let’s see it’s been almost a decade since I flew a Lufthansa transatlantic flight that offered wifi (I believe at that time they were the first). it was nice chatting with family during the 2.5hrs of my laptops battery life at that time. let’s hope other airlines follow in the states!
I used the WiFi last month on flights from Sacramento to Atlanta and Atlanta to Detroit. Worked well and reasonably fast, EXCEPT that you can’t use it if you are using Google DNS. Set up a new location and then let the DHCP draw to you the DNS that it is using.