HasWifi.com answers a simple question – will my plane have inflight Wi-Fi?

by Scott Carmichael on

Determining whether your next flight offers Wi-Fi isn’t that hard – most airline web sites have their own widget to help answer the question, but things can always be a bit easier. HasWiFi lets you enter your flight information, and instantly tells you whether you’ll be online for your flight, or whether you’ll need to suffer through another horrible inflight movie.

If you want to make life even easier, you can link the site with your TripIt account, and it’ll pull your upcoming flight information from their service, without having to look up flight numbers yourself.

Search results display the flight number, airplane type, destination and of course whether you’ll actually have Wi-Fi. The site also provides user feedback, in case the information from the airline turns out to be incorrect.

All in all, a very easy to use site. The content is simple enough to be viewed on a mobile phone, and the creator kept things nice and clean. So, before your next flight, head on over to HasWifi, and if you are lucky enough to be able to get online, don’t forget to create a Gogo Inflight account to make getting online even quicker.

Singapore Airlines to roll out ‘total connectivity’ in 2011

by McLean Robbins on

Travelers have long found the electronics ban to be a mixed burden and blessing – for some, it’s an oasis of peace and quiet during an otherwise hectic day. For others, flights, particularly long ones, are time sucks of lost productivity. In recent years, the roll-out of in-flight Wi-Fi services has dramatically improved the ability of business travelers to stay on top of their work.

Now, Singapore Airlines is entering the race to become the first major “fully connected” airline in Asia, rolling out the ability to make and receive phone calls, texts, and use Wi-Fi Internet on long-haul flights. Part of a collaboration with in-flight connectivity provider OnAir, the carrier will debut a range of on-board communication offerings as early as the first half of 2011.

These services will will be introduced progressively on flights operated by the Airline’s A380, A340-500 and Boeing 777-300ER aircraft.

“The environment that our customers have gotten used to on the ground can soon be replicated in the air, when they fly with Singapore Airlines on aircraft fitted with this new connectivity platform. Traveling for business or pleasure, they are just a click or a text message away, with access to live information, social networking and news updates, as well as in-flight shopping,” said Singapore Airlines’ Senior Vice President Product & Services, Mr. Yap Kim Wah.

“The agreement is extremely significant. It sends a strong signal to the industry that in-flight passenger communications has come of age – and is a must-have for airlines looking to remain competitive in the future,” said Ian Dawkins, CEO of OnAir.

Customers who use the mobile services will see their usage reflected in the monthly bills from their telecommunications provider where international GSM roaming rates apply.

We’re curious to see the backlash from this, particularly as abuses of the new-found “power” begin to occur. Will your overweight, unshowered middle eat companion now be allowed to yap endlessly to their friends about last night’s escapades, or will calls be limited in time and duration? Will flights have a designated “quiet zone”? We’ll be sure to follow up on any developments, and any airlines that follow suit.

[Flickr via William Hawkins]

Gadling visits Aircell – the company behind Gogo Inflight Internet

by Scott Carmichael on

There is no denying it – Gadling loves Gogo Inflight. So much in fact, that we begged to take a look behind the scenes at what makes this inflight Internet service run, and grill their executives on when we can finally have Internet on every single flight we take. It was a fascinating day, spent with people that really love what they are doing.
The geeky side of Aircell

The Aircell network consists of 92 ground stations. Think of them as the same kind of cell tower you have in your back yard, but looking up at the skies. The technology is very similar to what you use on Sprint and Verizon (EVDO Rev.A). Thankfully for Aircell, looking up at the skies requires a hell of a lot less towers than looking towards the horizon (like cellphone companies need to do). For starters, there are no trees and buildings blocking your view, and when you look up, there is no curvature of the earth to deal with.

Some other background information for the geeks – their network uses cellular equipment from Chinese manufacturer ZTE (their first major network sale in the US. The rest of it runs pretty much the same way any major network operates – a lot of Cisco and IBM equipment, and a backbone powered by AT&T. At the moment, each airplane gets 3.1mbit of bandwidth.

Their network operations center was surprisingly boring – a handful of people keep a close eye on the ground based network, and one guy watches the planes. The reason for this is actually great for Aircell – their equipment has proven to be extremely reliable, and they really can keep the entire network running with just a couple of guys.

In their network operations center, the wall has the screens you’d expect from any NOC – a couple of network status screens and a large plasma TV with 100’s of planes. The planes are all color coded to show their status. Thankfully all but one or two planes were green which may have explained the serenity in their room.

Aircell equipment installations

At the moment, Aircell has gear installed on just under 700 aircraft (this does not include installations on private planes). When you realize that just 12 months ago it was only on 23 planes, you’ll understand what an amazing accomplishment this has been.

The really amazing number is that the Aircell team can install the entire system on a plane in just 8 hours. Airlines hate taking a plane out of operation, and obviously, Aircell can’t ask the airline to hand them a plane for a couple of days. So at the moment, the Aircell team arrives at the airport, gets access to a plane at 10pm, and by sunrise, the plane has been equipped with everything it needs to offer Internet access in the skies.

The company

During the day, Aircell opened up every office in the building for me – nothing was off limits. I spent some time chatting with their CEO, their VP of airline operations and even spent some time in their mock airplane cabin complete with coach and first class seating. This cabin-in-an-office is where Aircell did some real hands-on testing of how people work on their computer, and probably realized like the rest of us that using a large laptop in a coach seat is a major hassle.

The future

As Aircell adds more aircraft to its network, and more users learn the joy of inflight Internet, you obviously run the risk of towers becoming too crowded, and the speed grinding to a halt. Thankfully the company is fully prepared to deal with that. When they showed me their current base station map, they showed how easy it is to just add new towers. So easy in fact, that they can even add towers for one specific high-traffic route. So, if too many people start using it between LA and San Francisco, keeping speeds acceptable involves nothing more than a new tower looking up to the skies on that route.

In addition to this, Aircell already has a future plan laid out for a migration to 4G technology. They have picked LTE as their next generation system, and as the market evolves, they’ll be able to beam as much as 100mbit to a single aircraft.

Of course, when I asked which airlines we can expect to join the ranks of the current Aircell customers, the room got rather quiet. But it is safe to say that pretty soon, almost every major US carrier will have committed to offering Internet in the air. There is only one competitor for domestic US inflight Internet access, and they have yet to see a major rollout to any aircraft.

One big topic at the Aircell HQ is video – video is big on the ground, and if it is up to them, it’ll be big in the skies as well. There were very few details about their plans, but if you picture turning your laptop into an inflight entertainment system with content coming from equipment on the plane, you’ll get an idea of how Aircell envisions the future of flying.

Wrap-up

I’d like to thank Aircell and everyone that took the time to speak to me. It was fun to see so many people speak so passionately about what they are doing. Despite some grumblings from the media wondering how they’ll ever make money, the company has a pretty solid outlook on the future. Usage is up month after month, they just reached the one million user mark, and are going to hit two million within the next month.

Obviously most passengers would prefer the service to be free, but when you look at the amount of money that has been pumped into building this network, it is pretty amazing they can offer it at this current price point.

Mexican authorities to allow mobile phone calls on commerical flights

by Scott Carmichael on

Good news! The Mexican FCC just canceled directive NOM-019SCT3-2001!

Sure, I’ll forgive you if you have no idea what this means (I didn’t either at first). The directive was a 2001 piece of law banning the use of mobile phones on commercial planes.

This means passengers will be legally permitted to yap away on their phones during “certain phases” of flight. The source article does not mention what those “certain phases” are, but it is probably just a way of saying you can use your phone after the take off and landing phase.

There is of course one small snag in this plan – no Mexican carriers actually offer inflight calling technology, and once you get above 10,000 feet, you won’t be in range of any cell towers. That said – it is probably just a matter of time till the airlines start seeing Peso bills, and install the equipment required to make calls. Other airlines that introduced inflight calling, did so with rates of about $4 per minute. You thought $12.95 for WiFi was too much? Try paying $20 for a call back home telling people what a great time you are having.

So far, US law still prohibits the use of mobile phones in flight, and if US Congressman Peter DeFazio has his way, that isn’t about to change any time soon. His ridiculously named ‘Hang-Up act” (Halting Airplane Noise to Give Us Peace) is trying to convince the FCC that removing the ban will kill air travel for everyone.

So dear readers, what do you think of inflight mobile phone calls?

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(Via: Engadget)

Virgin America is the first airline in the world with fleetwide WiFi service

by Scott Carmichael on

Last week, we wrote that Virgin America was aiming to become the first airline with fleetwide WiFi service.

A different airline had been telling us that they would be first to reach this milestone, but as of today, Virgin America is indeed the first airline in the world with Internet access on every single one of their flights. Internet access is provided by the Gogo In-flight service.

To celebrate, Virgin America will be airing an air-to-ground Skype call on the Oprah Winfrey show this Thursday May 21st (don’t worry, Skype is normally blocked on all flights).

This call is another first for the in-flight Internet world. Previously, Virgin America broadcast a live Youtube video stream from the air, and in February 2009, they hosted a live national TV broadcast over the coast of Massachusetts. In addition to this, they were also the first airline to inform customers which flights would be WiFi enabled at the time of booking.

It is refreshing to see an airline take a new technology, and promote it this aggressively, and on behalf of geeks, workaholics and Twitter addicts from around the world, I’d like to thank Virgin America.

Internet service on Virgin America costs $9.95 for flights up to 3 hours and $12.95 for longer flights. Red-eye flights offer a discounted rate of just $5.95 and passengers with a WiFi enabled PDA or Smartphone can get online for just $7.95.