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Wi-Fi May Become More Available On Flights

Posted on: Tuesday, 10 February 2009, 06:20 CST

People that admire being able to take a break from the office by flying from one place to another in silence without Internet might be in for a surprise.

Wireless Internet service is starting to spread among airlines in the United States.  The companies Delta and American Airlines have installed it on more than a dozen planes each, and several other airline companies are considering it as well.

The cost is about $10 for three hours and more for longer flights.  Many passengers welcome the development to help end Web withdrawals while being in flight.

However, other passengers consider it a new source of tension.  A flight attendants' union has even expressed concern that terrorists might use it to plot attacks.

A financial planner living in Los Angeles named Brent Bigler said he paid the $12.95 fee on a recent American Airlines flight to New York, and spent several hours reading e-mail and searching the Internet.  He said when his plane was delayed, he was able to reach a friend to say he would be late for dinner.

But, despite the personal benefits of having Internet, Bigler also said that he is worried about the downside.

"This could be the same thing as what happened with cellphones and Blackberries," he said. "Once it's cheap and ubiquitous, employers might expect employees to participate. I may feel guilty if it were a Monday and I napped or read and didn't use the Internet to do work."

Airline executives said they were well aware that having Internet has the potential to raise issues beyond the bottom line.

"We want to be respectful of the fact that an airplane is a public place," said Ranjan Goswami, director of product development at Delta. "You're in close intimacy with other passengers and the cabin crew."

Delta has given permission to its flight attendants to treat over enthusiastic users of Wi-Fi -- like people who loudly listen to YouTube videos or music -- the same way they treat people who imbibe too much, possibly by cutting them off if they start bother others around them.

"It's just like alcohol," Goswami said. "The flight attendants understand how to interact with that."

The Association of Flight Attendants, which represents 55,000 employees at 20 airlines, though not Delta, views Wi-Fi as a potential threat to flight attendants' ability to keep order in the cabin, according to Corey Caldwell, a union spokeswoman.

"Our duties involve securing the safety of the cabin, not acting as censor police," Caldwell said. "It just adds another layer of duties inside the cabin, which take away from the main requirement that flight attendants are on board for."

According to Caldwell, the flight attendants' union feared that terrorists plotting a scheme on a plane could use Wi-Fi to communicate with one another on board and with conspirators on the ground.

"Right now, their ability to do that on board is limited," she said. "But we can see an instance in which this becomes a potential threat."

The FAA currently bans the use of cellphones aboard planes because they might interfere with a jet's navigation system.  But Wi-Fi offers a way around that ban, since the wireless communications can be used to tap into Skype and other programs that offer telephone service via a computer.

Vice president for sales at Xtellus of Jersey City, Clarel Thevenot, said that during a flight from Stockholm he donned a headset with a microphone to call a friend in Paris.  "I made the call brief and pretty much said, 'I'm at 35,000 feet and I'm calling you,' " Thevenot said.

Aircell is proving both Wi-Fi services for each airline.  September Wade, a spokeswoman for American Airlines, said that the company is offering its service on 15 Boeing 767 jets.  If the test is successful, they might consider offering the service on its entire domestic fleet.

On Delta, the fee for Wi-Fi is $9.95 for a flight of three hours of less and $12.95 for a longer flight.  American-based carriers have yet to offer services on their international flights, although Delta is exploring it.

If each of the 150 passengers on a typical domestic flight were to buy three hours of time, it would add an extra $1,500 to the revenue per trip.  Delta said that its service was too new to accurately determine its popularity, and American would not say how many travelers were using the service.

Foreign carriers, such as Lufthansa, have been offering the service for the past several years.

Passengers who have used it say that the service works good for video clips from sites such as YouTube.  However, they say there isn't enough bandwidth to download a TV show from iTunes and watch it afterwards.

"The name of the game is to give customers choices, and let them vote for their own desire," said Goswami of Delta, which plans to have Wi-Fi available on 330 planes by the end of 2009.

The airline will keep track of how customers use the Wi-Fi technology, then decide whether to set limits on how customers can use the Internet, said Goswami.  Airlines can and do block access to pornography sites, and is blocking access to sites that offer Internet voice services.

"A lot of it will be self-policing," Goswami said. "If you're not aware of it, your seat-mate will make you aware."

Gayle Porter, professor of management at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey, says that guilt is common in today's pressure-filled workplaces, and might help with travelers deciding on whether or not to use the service.

"We want excuses to relax instead of making a conscious decision to relax," Porter said. "We don't want to put ourselves in the position of saying, 'That's my choice.' "

An author who lives in New York, Michael Gross, said he had mixed feelings about the availability of Wi-Fi on planes, although he has used it to send e-mail messages and write a post on his blog.  "One of the great things about getting on an airplane," he said, "is that it's life out of time."

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On the Net:

• Delta Airlines
• American Airlines
• Association of Flight Attendants
• FAA
• Lufthansa
• Rutgers University

Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports

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