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Virgin America is the first airline in the world with fleetwide WiFi service
Last week, we wrote that Virgin America was aiming to become the first airline with fleetwide WiFi service. A different airline had been telling us that they would be first to reach this milestone, but as of today, Virgin America is indeed the first airline in the world with Internet access on every single one of their flights. Internet access is provided by the Gogo In-flight service.
To celebrate, Virgin America will be airing an air-to-ground Skype call on the Oprah Winfrey show this Thursday May 21st (don't worry, Skype is normally blocked on all flights).
This call is another first for the in-flight Internet world. Previously, Virgin America broadcast a live Youtube video stream from the air, and in February 2009, they hosted a live national TV broadcast over the coast of Massachusetts. In addition to this, they were also the first airline to inform customers which flights would be WiFi enabled at the time of booking.
It is refreshing to see an airline take a new technology, and promote it this aggressively, and on behalf of geeks, workaholics and Twitter addicts from around the world, I'd like to thank Virgin America.
Internet service on Virgin America costs $9.95 for flights up to 3 hours and $12.95 for longer flights. Red-eye flights offer a discounted rate of just $5.95 and passengers with a WiFi enabled PDA or Smartphone can get online for just $7.95.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
rrgg May 20th 2009 11:06AM
Give me a break. Let's have some intellectual honesty here and disclose the fact that they have hardly any planes. Of course they'll be "done" sooner than large carriers, even though they started late.
Adam May 20th 2009 6:48PM
ooVoo (not Skype) was actually first to the punch on the in-flight video chat on Virgin America. No Oprah though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6makeCsVeJ0