Communication access at 36,000 ft.
Having recently subjected myself to two international flights (Virgin Atlantic, my second fave service bar British Airways) I came away thinking about how airlines could provide me with a better service. As I spend much of my working day hooked up on email, surfing and commercializing Second Life I figured I could continue to be much more productive if the airlines went just a little further and rolled out on-board wifi. Now, I know they are in the habit of complaining about interference with on-board systems, and I know that they haven't read the reports from scientists saying there is NO DANGER to on-board communication devices (the problem was always with analogue systems NOT digital) and I know that they will use any excuse they can not to listen to the voice of the customer and provide a better service. I know all of that. BUT - what they don't realise is that the first in advantage of this sort of feature could be significant. Some airlines have tried it before and it failed (Lufthansa for instance). It failed because they wanted to charge ridiculous access costs to business class passengers only. Well - surprise surprise!! Of course it was going to fail - most business class passengers I know prefer NOT to work on the flight and get some shut eye instead! I on the other hand - a dedicated member of the digerati - would love to spend my hours doing what I normally do at work and at home. So - someone please - wake up and get market oriented. Such a service might also convince me to fly american services once again - provided of course that access was free. Until that time though - Ill continue to fly anyone other than domestic carriers where ever possible. Rant over.
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Boeing rolled out their Connexion service about two years ago, then shut it down when few people were willing to pay the $30/flight they were charging…
http://www.forbes.com/business/forbes/2007/1126/056.html
I would love cheap wifi. I have two questions though:
1. How much would it cost to keep this wifi running? Obviously they would have to be using satellites(having a giant fiber cable connecting the plane to the ground would be a sight though). $30 for wifi does seem like a lot but if only 10 people on the plane would use wifi, that might be the only reasonable price. It’s all about the numbers.
2. how fast would this connection be? I’d prefer no internet to super slow internet. The latter makes me stress out.
Article in today’s (Dec 7) WSJ on this topic. Jet Blue is testing free in-flight wi-fi. However, it looks as though Yahoo is getting involved and placing some form of requirement, and this model will work with newer model Blackberrys.
one day in the not too distant future you wont have idiots running businesses. Plain and Simple. BA flew 33,068,000 last year. Imagine if 10% of them pay $15 for internet access per flight or even $50 for the entire year. thats between $40million-$100million in business.
Idiots, Wake up.
Kingfisher airlines(flykingfisher.com) is going international soon, they have great service and are always looking to add things for their passengers.
They have recently tied up with On air (onair.aero) to offer them mobile and internet access for passengers on their international flights.
Its all about how much you really care bout your passengers i reckon.
JetBlue is trying this starting yesterday…
http://blogs.zdnet.com/soho-networking/?p=100