Congrats to US Airways for striking up a deal with Aircell to deploy Gogo on their fleet of 50 A321 aeroplanes.

Condolences to the hard working folks who will have to wait until 2010 to use the in-flight Wi-Fi service.

Any in-flight Wi-Fi fans in the audience? Listen up, kids. Aircell announced new pricing for their Gogo service today and it applies to those flying extremely short distances, like 1.5 hours. If you’re on a flight that’s less than 1.5 hours you’ll be forking over $6 and those of you looking for a 24-hour pass will have to shell over $13. That is all.

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.

Come chat with me on Ustream on my Virgin America flight and watch people walk by! I’ll be turning on my camera every hour or so and I’ll be chatting live from 35,000 feet.

I’ll also be IMing with Virgin America’s IFE engineer James Weatherson around 6PM PT today and I’ll post a transcript. He’s in charge of the Red entertainment system on-board all VA flights and we’ll find out what we can expect to see from the in-flight entertainment system this year.

If you have any questions you’d like me to ask him, feel free to leave a comment.

Update: If you feel like chatting on AIM then hit me up at crunchtips, kids.

Update 2: James wasn’t able to join us, so we’re going off the air. We’ll update if he manages to get online. Otherwise, we’ll have an in-person interview later this week.
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Our buds over at Jaunted just gave us the heads up that Virgin America will begin rolling out Aircell’s Gogo service, which we reviewed back in August, on November 22. The “beta” flight will take off from SFO, VA’s HQ, to JFK. Virgin plans to roll out the in-flight broadband service on one plane per week with a full rollout scheduled by March 2009. Oh, and they won’t be filtering the service either. The RED system will eventually be wired in as well, but we won’t see that happen until later on in 2009.

Sorry, people. The dream is over. American Airlines has decided that it, along with Delta (and the flight attendants), does not want porn on its flights — despite receiving no complaints whatsoever. Say they:

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.

Canadian travelers will soon be able to emulate their favorite CrunchGear blogger, Peter Ha, as they glom on to Aircell’s Gogo wireless internet service aboard their next international Air Canada flight. You’ll recall that Sweet Pete recently blogged from 37,000 feet using Gogo service aboard American Airlines. What fun we all had!

You’ll have to wait until at least spring of 2009, as that’s when Air Canada hopes to start rolling out the service on its fleet of Airbus A319 airplanes that fly between Canada and the United States.

So you’ve found a way to make VoIP calls on American Airlines flights with Gogo by using some Flash-based service? Good for you, really, but anyone saying that they’ve hacked the system needs to reassess the meaning of the term. Stumbling upon an app that works is not hacking anything. It’s called being lucky. I honestly didn’t care enough to try out all the possible VoIP apps that are out there because I didn’t feel the urgency to chat with anyone. Nor did I want to bother other passengers. I despise loud talkers wherever I am and if I have to be stuck on a plane for any length of time with some jackass yapping away, I sure as hell will let them know I don’t like it.

Aircell released this statement regarding the situation because everyone and their mother is all aflutter about it in the tech space of the Interwebs.
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I know Mossberg ‘reviewed’ the service a while back, but he was on the plane by himself with a cornucopia of devices. That’s not a real world situation. I was skeptical of the whole thing like most of you were, but after yesterday I’m completely sold. It’s not earth shattering or anything. I mean, it’s only Wi-Fi on a plane, but it’s finally here and better than expected.

Let’s start with the good. Getting yourself set up is super easy, but there is one caveat. Managing your Gogo account from a mobile device is limited and you’ll need a laptop to get everything up and running. It’s also not really worth it to pay $13 if you’re only going to be using your BlackBerry, iPhone or Windows Mobile device, but I digress. Setup is simple, but if you do run into some problems there is a 24-hour help desk that’s available to you via IM regardless of whether or not you’re connected. I actually used it yesterday and they got me squared away in a matter of minutes. Also, for the next month or two there will be Gogo reps from Aircell wearing mint green polos on board to help customers out. After that there will be telephone CSRs at your beck and call.

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I guess my mystery device isn’t supported, but I’ll try it out anyway.

I find myself on AA flight #3 headed to LAX from NY’s JFK. Today marks the first day of Aircell’s Gogo inflight service going live for the masses. It will be available on flights from NYC to LA, Miami and San Francisco. The 8AM flight to Miami from JFK is not a 767-200, so those going south won’t be privy to Aircell’s Gogo service.

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.
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We’ve covered this topic on multiple occasions and, well, today the service is going live for the masses on AA. The Boeing 767-200 aircrafts in AA’s fleet flying from NYC to LA, Miami and San Francisco will have the service flipped on and we’ll be on a flight from JFK to LAX today. Pricing will be $12.95 for flights with a duration of over three hours. Check back at noon EDT for a live blog/review of the service.
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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?*

We’ve been a huge proponent of Aircell’s GoGo service for months now and we’re tickled pink to learn that GoGo will finally be launching sometime next month with American Air. I’m extremely jealous that Walt got to test out the service before all of us, but that’s just the way these things work out and it makes me sad. Oh well.

Anyway, Mossberg took a test flight from San Francisco to Aircell’s home base in Colorado to test out the service. He averaged 500-600Kbps down and 300Kbps up, which isn’t blazing fast, but good enough if you ask me. It is on a plane and most of us haven’t been privy to such frivolous things in the past. Pricing is set $12.95 for flights over three hours and there’s also a flat-rate of $9.95. Also, we’ve already known this for some time, but I just wanted to reiterate the fact that Aircell’s service will not allow VoIP calls or any calls in general, so don’t think you’ll be chatting away on your transcontinental flights.

Oh, you probably want to know which cities will get first dibs on the service, don’t you? Flights going in and out of New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Miami on Boeing 767s will get first crack. Virgin America will follow suit across their entire fleet later in the year.

You might wonder about those test speeds and say that it will bomb once everyone and their mother logs on, but Aircell claims that Mossberg’s test flight directly portrays what others will soon experience. He was logged onto the service with eight laptops and six Wi-Fi-enabled handsets. In case you were wondering.