This post is coming live from American Airlines flight 1597, from Jacksonville to Dallas Fort-Worth. I’m on my way home after the Flying Across America project, and the MD-82 I’m flying in has in-flight WiFi from GoGo Inflight, so this is really live, not just a post I written in an aircraft and published later.
I’m not sure having Internet in flight is really a must, but it is funny to try it. I uploaded a new picture to my facebook profile and sent some tweets. Oh, and I can also track this very flight online on FlightAware, which is quite cool.
It looks like we’ll have some rain over Louisiana today before landing at Dallas. I also checked the gate of my flight out of Dallas – the connection time is a bit short.
More seriously, being able to check mails and keep in touch with the world in flight is a good thing. I travel a lot within Europe for my work and flights are often delaying some actions by lack of Internet connectivity. This service is not for free, it costs $9.95 per flight, in this case a 2 hours flight, and is available only over the continental US. I would love it for the next flight, from Dallas to Frankfurt, which will last for 10 hours…
As all innovations, this one requires some new rules and a good etiquette. Gogo suggests to limit the use of their services to e-mail and “decent” internet browsing. I guess that using skype or other similar voice over internet services is possible but I’m not sure my neighbor would appreciate that. This is why I like internet in flight but am against cell-phones in flight. Sending text messages would be ok, but I really don’t want to seat between two other persons engaged in two different phone calls…
PS: this flight just received a new route clearance, probably to avoid weather over Lousiana. This sounds like a good plan these cells look quite active, and I was a bit worried. Too bad our Captain did not inform us. Thank you Internet.
Vincent Lambercy is a Swiss private pilot now living in Germany. He holds a private pilot certificate with single-engine, multi-engine and instrument ratings and has logged more than 430 hours of flight.
