Aircell and American Airlines have just announced that the domestic carrier will continue to deploy Gogo throughout 300 planes in the next two years. Starting this year, AA will outfit 150 MD-80 aircrafts followed by Boeing 737-800s. Gogo is currently available on non-stop AA flights originating from JFK to SFO, LAX and MIA. Flights longer than three hours cost $13 while flights shorter than that cost $10 and there’s a mobile device plan for $8. That is all.

Though nearly the entire pre-flight process has been tweaked to make use of modern technologies, one outdated aspect still lingers: the tickets. Every single time I fly, I find myself checking the location where I put my tickets once every 3-4 minutes. Are they still there? Did I remember to zip up after I last checked? When I pulled my hand out, did the ticket sneak out? I’ve never lost a ticket, yet I consistently fear that I will. It’s just such an abnormal thing in our daily lives – when else are we given something to hang on to for a few hours that is so easy to lose or destroy, yet so significant in the success of our plans? Lose that ticket, and there’s a good chance queues and regulations might just make you miss your flight. Miss your flight, and you’ll be making up for it your entire trip.

Fortunately, the times are changing.

Read more at MobileCrunch>>

Based on the feedback of our customers and employees, American Airlines is working with Aircell(R) to implement technology to filter pornographic content over the Gogo(R) inflight Internet service.

I guess you’ll have to “pack in” your own stuff and not rely on the bounty of the internet. You filthy animal.

Aircell released this statement regarding the situation because everyone and their mother is all aflutter about it in the tech space of the Interwebs.

It is against American’s policy and Gogo’s terms of service to use VoIP. Aircell has multiple protocols and practices in place to prevent the use of VoIP. Obviously, it is extremely difficult to stop every instance of VoIP but Aircell is monitoring and working constantly to enforce American’s policy and Gogo’s terms of service.

This is American Airline’s policy not to allow VoIP and Aircell does their best to abide by those rules, which is why it’s stated in the agreement you check off on when purchasing the service. If you violate those terms then you should have your service cut off, but Aircell doesn’t plan on doing that. They want you to enjoy the service with one caveat. It might be something they should seriously think about for those striving to be the asshole on the plane, though. Get drunk. Snore. Just don’t babytalk with your signif, tell your frat bro how hot the chick you banged last night was (this goes both ways, ladies), yell at your intern/co-workers or read your kid a bedtime story. Need to converse with someone that bad, do you? Then try emailing or IM. Emoticons can go a long way. You’re making an otherwise great service a real stinker in the minds of everyone else, jerk.

Oh, and what’s this about airlines trying to protect revenue streams from those Airphones? Yeah, those Airphones have been useless for years. Aircell swooped the spectrum that Verizon used for the service in 2006 in an FCC auction. They’re relics of the past and indicators that the plane you’re currently occupying is very old.

So, VoIP on Aircell’s Gogo service. Yeah, you can do it, but you should really get over it and just watch your damned reruns on Hulu or fancast and STFU.

Now that in-flight internet is becoming a normal option, a certain taboo activity is popping up more and more during those long, lonely flights. A few airlines have taken the issue upon themselves to lock down certain themed sites but that doesn’t rule out already downloaded material. Then other airlines, such as American Airlines, are offering unfiltered service and thus leaving the discretion up to the user — and flight attendants.

It isn’t like attendants don’t have enough to do already, pimping their airlines food and $8 headphones, but now they have to be on the lookout for solo mile-high club attendees. According to a Fox News report, American Airlines feels strongly about not limiting available content and has empowered flight attendants to deal with whatever sticky situations might arise. 

“You can well imagine a parent flying with a child seated next to somebody, in the extreme case, seated next to somebody watching pornography.” said Jones. “There’s always going to be someone who probably steps over the line. What’s interesting is, the question is, ‘how do we deal with this person?”

Who in their right mind would think that it’s cool to pop open a laptop and cruise for some fresh Jesse Jane flicks when sitting next to a kid? Seriously. I just hope that when American Airlines say they have empowered flight attendant that the company means that the attendants are armed with tasers for such, um, occasions. 

But anyway, in case you haven’t picked up on the side story of this post, American Airlines doesn’t have a filter on their new service. Just so you know.

image source: airlines.net

The flight is full from what I’m told and Aircell had plenty of people on hand at the gate to promote the service. Exactly how many folks will utilize the service is unknown at this point. I’ll be using my MacBook Pro, iPhone 3G and T-Mobile BlackBerry Curve along with one other smartphone that’s Wi-Fi enabled. I’m in economy so it’s going to be a tight squeeze. Hopefully the lady sitting in front of me won’t lean her seat back, but that’s doubtful. I’ve already got my laptop on my lap as is and it’s not pleasant. I wish one of the manufacturers who I requested a sub-notebook/netbook from had gotten back to me. I’m looking at you Lenovo, HP, Asus, MSI and Dell.

The service unavailable splash screen reveals that Gogo won’t work below 10,000 feet and is only available within the continental U.S. I will individually test all my devices and then simultaneously to see what sort of bandwidth I’m getting.

Speed tests after the jump.

So far Speedtest.net is giving me 1,748 kbps down and roughly 290kbps up.

Another test reveals similar results.

This one’s not so good.

One more test on the laptop and I’ll start testing my iPhone 3G and BlackBerry Curve.

So far so good, folks. The aircrafts are 767s and not 727s. If you’re on a flight for more than three hours than I think $13 is worth it. The only caveat here is that American Airlines only supports cigarette lighter adapters, so I’m screwed in about an hour when my battery dies. FastMac was supposed to send me an extended battery weeks ago, but they’ve failed to do so. Virgin America on the other hand has normal outlets.

I just tried out the service on my iPhone 3G and it worked well. You have to sign off from each device to export the service to another. It’s a pain, but there for a reason. I’ll get video or time how long it takes to download an app from the app store.

I’m currently on Skype, AIM, and MSN messenger. I tried calling someone over VoIP on Skype but it dropped after five seconds. Service has been good so far. There were a few spots where the connection was sluggish, but otherwise it’s been rock solid.

I’m currently watching Doug’s review on YouTube and there’s no lag for a five-minute video.

One clever IMer just asked me:

and here’s a question, feel free to write about it, if you were to commit a crime, lets say hack something stupid via the wi-fi on flight, where would they extradite you to?

We’ll get the answer soon. Also, I know you’re all wondering how they’re blocking VoIP calls. We’ll have that answer soon.

Oh great! The f*cking stewardess flight attendant just spilled water on my laptop!

VoIP calls are sort of going through, but nothing can be heard on either end. Former CG editor Josh Goldman just tried calling said they heard some sort of “digital tune.”

My laptop is going dark in less than 10, so I’m switching to iPhone 3G and/or BlackBerry Curve.

I’ll be back shortly, folks. Leave you questions in comments and I’ll do my best to get them answered.

4:18PM EST – Switched from my dead laptop to my BB. The switchover was easy but I didn’t get a connection for a few minutes. E-mail, browser and BB messenger are all working flawlessly.

To answer your question about VoIP calls I just spoke with Jack Blumenstein, the president and ceo of Aircell. They’ve restricted the packets that enable voip calls but clearly haven’t blocked skype altogether. Connections can be made that may or may not last a few seconds but the audio then becomes garbled.

Just made a call over UMA on my BlackBerry to my brother and it went through. Lasted about a minute. Will get a wav file to post on the site.

The connection is now garbled.

To all the commenters who are telling me to plug in: All outlets need cig lighter adapters. Feh.
5:06PM EST – Update: blackberry uma connection is spotty
Aircell’s tech guy had his nokia n810 and it was running fine
He said bb’s UMA is a problem and they’re working to resolve it now
Also, any winmo device with wifi will work regardless regardless of the devices listed on the gogo site

Cool. Gogo service automatically shuts off when it goes below 10k feet

6:03PM EST – Brief layover in LAX before jumping on a flight back. Leave questions in comments.

6:31PM EST – Bandwidth is prioritized, so if you’re juicing the network by watching video or downloading then your connection gets slower but it won’t stop and other passenger won’t be affected.

One passenger was watching basebll games through sling on the outbound flight.

Just left LAX and I’m back online. I have roughly one hour of laptop juice left, so please feel free to leave a comment or AIM me at crunchtips.

Going to watch some video on fancast and see what it does to my bandwidth.

7:40PM EDT
Currently watching this episode of Family Guy. Bandwidth is holding steady. Guess there aren’t too many people using Gogo right now.

7:42PM EDT
RE: VPN. Folks from Aircell are telling me that it’s up to your IT department based on how strong the Wi-Fi connection needs to be. I know a couple AA execs were connected over VPN on the outbound flight from JFK to LAX.

Do you guys want to know anything else?

[Devin says: Peter and I played this little fridge magnet game. Worked fine, so no upstream issues.]

Facebook chatting with the boss, MA, now.

Just ran four fancast streams and bandwidth went down a bit.

Running three Hulu streams with no noticeable lag on any of the streams. Trying to Bit Torrent, but I’ve got zilch going down or up.

Spoke too soon. My streams are getting choppy.

8:15PM EDT
I have roughly 15 minutes left of juice on my laptop. Better get your questions in now.

8:17PM EDT
Torrenting a 233MB file now with download speeds ranging from 0B/s to 3.1Kbps with nothing uploading.

8:25PM EDT
Well, that’s it for me, folks. My laptop is about to kick the can, so I’ll be switching over to my BlackBerry/iPhone 3G for the remainder of the flight. Feel free to email me at peter at crunchgear dot com with any questions and I’ll do my best to get them answered.

FORT WORTH, Texas and ITASCA, Ill. – Marking the beginning of the next wireless revolution, American Airlines made history today with the launch of the mobile broadband service, Gogo(tm) provided by Aircell®.

Effective today, customers traveling on American’s Boeing 767-200 aircraft can access complete coast-to-coast coverage on nonstop flights between New York and San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles, and New York and Miami. American, the world’s largest airline and founding member of the oneworld® Alliance, and Aircell, the world’s leading provider of airborne communications, have joined together to bring the first full inflight broadband service to the U.S. market.

“We are pleased to provide our customers with the unprecedented ability to stay connected to their family, friends and business associates on the ground via the Internet while traveling at 30,000 feet above the United States,” said Dan Garton, American’s Executive Vice President – Marketing. “With today’s launch, American Airlines makes history as the first and only U.S. airline to offer customers full inflight Internet connectivity, demonstrating once again our industry leadership and focus on our customers.”

Aircell’s Gogo will be available to customers as a fee-based service in all cabins. Aircell will charge $12.95 on flights more than three hours, which include American’s Boeing 767-200 flights. Each paid Gogo session includes full Internet access. Cell phone and Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) services are not available.

Gogo turns an American Airlines flight into a Wi-Fi hotspot, enabling passengers to surf the Web, check any email, Instant Message, access a corporate VPN, and more. Once the aircraft has reached 10,000 feet, users can simply turn on their Wi-Fi enabled devices such as laptops, smartphones and PDAs, open their browsers and be directed to the Gogo portal page where they sign up and begin surfing. Gogo is powered by the Aircell air-to-ground (ATG) Broadband System, which runs over Aircell’s exclusive nationwide network.

“Today, U.S. air travel changes forever. With Aircell’s unique ATG inflight Internet service, airlines finally have an economically viable option for providing the broadband connectivity passengers are demanding,” said Jack Blumenstein, President and CEO, Aircell. “American Airlines is the first to bring inflight Internet to market, and today the days of being cut off from the rest of the world while in the air become history.”

American Airlines is quite possibly the most horrendous airline on the face of the planet. I’m waiting for my flight to LA at Gate 12 in JFK. I was supposed to leave at 7:15 ET, but it’s been pushed out to 7:50 ET. So feel free to swing by and say hello and possibly buy me a beer. Although, I don’t see a bar anywhere around. I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that my flight has Aircell’s GoGo service.

Big ups to Samsung for providing me with a Mobile Charging Station!

*Why am I not taking Virgin America?*

Hey, here’s a happy surprise for anyone who may happen to be flying from New York (JFK) and Los Angeles on American Airlines tomorrow. The company will be conducting “a dress rehearsal” of in-flight Wi-Fi service, called GoGo, provided by Aircell.

American has a fleet of 15 767-200 airplanes that have the Wi-Fi connections installed and ready to go, so assuming the flight tomorrow goes off without a hitch it’s expected that the service will be rolled out to flights between New York and Miami and New York and San Francisco over the coming weeks.

Tomorrow’s trial flight will offer the Wi-Fi service free of charge, but once the service is in full swing, it’ll cost $12.95 for flights over three hours and $9.95 for shorter flights.

According to the Dallas Morning News,

“Users will be able to download video and e-mail, use instant messaging and access secure corporate networks through the system using laptops or handheld wireless-enabled devices such as BlackBerrys.

Gogo will not enable any voice-based functions. And the system will prioritize the flow of data so that passengers downloading movies or large documents won’t prevent other passengers from getting their e-mail.”

via Jaunted

Today Continental announced that they will be offering Wi-Fi, but it will be the same crippled mess that you’ll find on JetBlue. It’s not all bad, though. The agreement with LiveTV will also bring 36 channels of live TV directly to your seat via DirecTV. First-class passengers will receive the service (TV) for free while passengers in economy-class will have to muster up $6. The Wi-Fi service I just mentioned will be free. It’s free because it sucks. I’ll wait for AirCell’s service on American or Virgin America.

Press Release

Last week Aircell successfully installed their Internet Broadband Connectivity Solution at AA’s Kansas City maintenance facility. The Boeing 767-200 will begin beta testing over the next few weeks pending FAA certifications. The air-to-ground broadband system will provide you with hours of enjoyment provided you take a fancy to LOL Cats, porn without sound or CrunchGear. That’s a tough choice, I know.

You’ll essentially have your desktop experience on a plane sans VoIP, which hackers won’t be able to hack, but they can try hacking it except it can’t be hacked. Aircell will also provide complimentary access to AA.com, access to the WSJ Digest Edition, VPN compatibility and uninterrupted coverage across the US above 10,000 feet.

That’s all well and dandy, but how much does it cost? For domestic flights in the five to six hour range you can expect to pay $12.95. For shorter trips of about three hours you’ll be expected to ante up $9.95 and for those traveling on more than one occasion each day you’ll have a day pass for $12.95. Day pass pricing hasn’t been set, yet. There will also be monthly and annual subscriptions.

The actual system works like this,

Aircell’s air-to-ground inflight Internet system for commercial aircraft uses three lightweight antennae installed on the outside of the aircraft. One antenna, the PCS/GPS antenna, is mounted on the top of the aircraft, and the other two antennas are mounted to the bottom of the aircraft. Customers access the broadband signal using their own Wi-Fi enabled devices, which communicate directly with wireless access points that are distributed evenly throughout the aircraft cabin ceiling. The signal will be transmitted through the 3mhz signal from air to ground using 92 cellular towers throughout the continental United States.

It’s a pilot program for now (heh), but if successful, it could ripple through to all of American’s planes. What’s great is AA is offering the service for free. In a world where airlines must charge for a second package of pretzels, they’re giving you Wi-Fi for free 10 bucks a pop. Thank heavens, and thanks American.

More as we hear.