Comments on: Blogging live from 37,000 feet via Aircell’s Gogo inflight Wi-Fi on American Airlines

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:59:46 +0000

Paid 9.95 for the inflight Internet, only to find that they cripple skype. I don’t pay for censored/crippled Internet and nothing was mentioned about that before I ran my card. I asked for a refund and they refused so I got the credit card company involved and got my money back. I guess the only way to really have unfiltered net in the sky is to do it via encrypted vpn traffic.

By: Michael Meder

Michael Meder — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 20:32:58 +0000

Someone wouldn’t happen to have a fullsized screen-capture of the gogo portal, would they?

By: deadmonz

deadmonz — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:56:30 +0000

awesome…question: flight weather? meaning did u go thru any storms, and what happened then? or basically has anyone used laptop, cell, etc inflight during said weather events…I would also be curious to see if in a flight up to Alaska at dawn breaking the horizon if there was any intrusions on downloads because of solar flares etc….please advise…

By: MB

MB — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:15:18 +0000

Wake me up, before you gogo!

By: Phil Morle

Phil Morle — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 01:46:23 +0000

I’m bound for SFO from JFK and I confirm that the service is very very good. :-)

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 23:52:17 +0000

@michael arrington — boeing’s solution, which is similar to Aircell’s own corporate equipment for satellite-based Internet is too heavy for commercial aircraft, costly to install and maintain, and takes a plane out of the sky for almost two weeks to get all the hardware in there.

Gogo hardware weighs slightly more than two pieces of luggage, and is completely installed in an overnight layover at the gate.

@Deanna — VOIP, as I understand it, is made available via telephone handset for crew. So in case of emergency, they’re only a call away from help.

Another neat and under-reported facet of the technology is mechanical data transmission. Like if a windshield wiper breaks during flight (source of a six-hour delay for me once), the maintenance hub can be pinged immediately and begin sourcing the repair, instead of waiting for the plane to land before diagnosing repair needs.

We’ve been helping Aircell on the interactive marketing and design of the brand and the product for about a year, and I can’t wait for this to roll-out nationwide. Aside fro my own selfish personal reasons of wanting inflight Internet (personal), and seeing how the Internet is used in this unchartered corner of UX (professional) the Aircell and Gogo teams have really brought a win-win solution for all parties that will only grow in appeal and bandwidth. It’s a great day for the Internet!

By: Peter Ha

Peter Ha — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 23:35:07 +0000

VoIP is blocked for the most part. I made it through for a minute before it got canned.

By: Deanna

Deanna — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 23:27:41 +0000

Please, please let them make VoIP only for emergencies. Or block it all together.

By: Dylan S.

Dylan S. — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 22:43:04 +0000

Pretty awesome. Can’t wait for hackers to do their business up in teh air!

By: 6969

6969 — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:30:12 +0000

Not bad. How many other users where using the system? Here in lies the real problem; someone is going to try to download a large file and everyone using the system is going to get hosed.

By: az1324

az1324 — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:36:58 +0000

It would be cool to see a live video stream through Qik or Flixwagon. Could come in handy if anything happens during the flight… who needs black boxes. We’ve got live screams… i mean streams.

By: G Miller

G Miller — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:34:17 +0000

How high was the latency on pings?

I’d be interested to see if VPN’s worked and if so how well.

By: Dave Zatz

Dave Zatz — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:58:04 +0000

Wonder how those packets are coming through – probably proxied to death. Have you tried Hulu, Netflix, or YouTube?

By: Dave Zatz

Dave Zatz — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:56:43 +0000

Speedtest.net for the love of God! :)

By: peterhahaha

peterhahaha — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:24:08 +0000

oh dear god i hope they ARE blocking voip calls. F having some junior-business man on calls next to you for a cross-country flight. F it i say!

By: michael arrington

michael arrington — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:37:27 +0000

i remember doing this back in…2005. funny.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/07/06/profile-connexion-boeing/

By: Wags

Wags — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:28:40 +0000

Is it worth the cost? Dude, its ten bucks a flight. If you’d rather read SkyMall (again), I guess its not worth it. Otherwise, it seems like a great deal. I would have expected it to be about $20/flight when it launched.

By: Doug

Doug — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:23:29 +0000

The in-flight speed you’re getting seems to be twice as fast as the speed I’m getting right this moment on land, using my Verizon wireless card!

By: Robert

Robert — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:20:37 +0000

A 727-200? Could you have meant 767 maybe?

By: Hillrider

Hillrider — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:09:04 +0000

The good thing about AA is that it does have power on a big chunk of its seats (every third row); see the seatmap at http://www.aa.com/aa/i18nForward.do?p=/aboutUs/ourPlanes/boeing767200DomInter.jsp when you’re booking your flight.