American Airlines may have actually come up with a way to make more money without ticking people off. Instead of charging for a service that used to be free--did anyone say checked bags?--the airline is piloting a system to charge passengers for Internet privileges.

Yep, that's right. While you're winging your way through the skies, you can log on. Need to e-mail? No problem.

You'll also be able to instant message, download videos, and connect to a smart phone through a secured network using your own laptop.

Passengers on one lucky flight today from Kennedy in New York to Los Angeles and a flight from Los Angeles to New York will be able to test the service for free.

In a couple of weeks, American will expand broadband to other flights on Boeing 767-200 jets. Flights to San Francisco and Miami are next.

These Internet capabilities are being developed through a partnership with Aircell LLC. Aircell's network is large enough to handle a whole plane load of Web surfers.

Knowing that you need to diversify in business, Aircell is also working out details with JetBlue and Virgin America for similar services.

American Airline's latest money scheme is one I like. Adding a new service and charging for it instead of wringing money out of folks who used to get the same thing for free seems smarter. The price isn't bad either. Internet will cost between $9.95 and $12.95 depending on the length of the flight.

And in case you're wondering about the chances of pornography showing up on the screen next to you--or on yours, not a chance--at least not much of one. According to the article, the flight attendant will stop the funny business. There are already policies against bringing pornography on the plane. The same applies to Internet, even though such sites won't be filtered out . Blocking them might disrupt service. Mind your manners, and the skies will stay friendly. [via AP]

We may have a new contender for worst passenger on an aircraft ever, ladies and gentlemen. Sorry Kyla and girls who think they're prettier than the rest of the plane, you may have met your match.

On a Jetblue flight between San Francisco and New York this past Tuesday, Christina Szele just couldn't wait any any longer for a smoke and decided to light up in the cabin. Obviously this has been outlawed on planes for years, so a flight attendant went back to ask her to put it out.

In response to the request, Szele instead verbally abused the flight attendant with racist remarks, provoking futher concern from the crew. After further agitation, several employees decided to restrain her and were able to secure her well enough to apply flexible handcuffs.

Untill she broke out of them. And punched the flight attendant that she was earlier harrasing in the face. Great idea.

Things got so far out of hand that the pilot had to divert the flight into Denver and have the woman removed from the aircraft and arrested. Now she faces 20 years in prison and up to 250,000 in fines.

I think that they should have just thrown her out of the plane with a parachute.

This is it, people, your chance to buy an airline, because Volare Airlines, an Italian low-cost carrier, is now up for sale - again!

What's that? Not enough money you say? Why don't we all pool our money together and buy...oh I don't know...maybe just one of the airplanes. We can each buy a seat. And since we'd only own one airplane, we can call our small little airline MY PLANE. That means when someone asks, "what airline did you travel on," you can then say, "My Plane," and mean it, because it is your plane, as well as my plane.

We'll take votes and fly the most popular route once a day. But the real beauty of owning My Plane is this...I would...I mean WE would get to design it from the bottom up. Just the way we want. And because we'd only want the best for My Plane, which is also your plane, I'd like to make a few suggestions..

After reading all 754 comments from my post Flight Attendant Pet Peeve #1, Answer Please! it's apparent we should only hire flight attendants from one of the Asian carriers. Why? Passengers, at least the ones who commented on my post, seem to love them. Hey, what's not to love about an airline that hires flight attendants who are all the same uniform size - small. That makes complete sense - one size uniform for the one and only airplane. Forget equal opportunity, we make the rules at this airline! And while we're at it making those rules, how about we only allow one size of passenger onboard - small of course, which will help save fuel. As you know, saving on fuel is the name of the game these days. Which is why that small passenger can only bring onboard one small bag and place it under the small seat. The small flight attendant will then serve a small meal to the small passenger with the small bag under the small seat and...wait a minute...we're not talking about us, are we? I think we are. We're the ones traveling on My Plane, remember? So scratch that. But we can still steal a few of those Singapore Airline girls, but make them funny, like the good people at Southwest Airlines.

Of course we'd have to include Virgin's beauty therapy services on My Plane. Trust me when I tell you that I'll be the first one in line for a manicure and massage. Yes, I know, I am working the flight, but don't forget, when the flight attendant is happy, the passenger is happy. Or is it the other way around? I can't remember. I'm too numb from my massage to remember. But all you need to remember is that you're getting all this for Jet Blue prices. Could it get any better?

Summer fares can be a killer, especially in this new world of cost-cutting airlines and ultra sensitive passengers. So I suppose its worth mentioning the recent Amex/Jetblue promotion that's running where you can save 20$ per flight over this summer.

No, not a ridiculous fare sale or wonderful revelation. But a few extra bucks in your pocket for your summertime flight never hurts. Maybe you can use it for four extra shots of tequila at JFK airport before you get on your transcontinental flight and realize that you just spent a month's rent on the ticket. It might help soften the blow (Tip: any tequila with red plastic hat on the bottle is a good call).

To book your ticket, use your American Express card on the Myvacation page to book your ticket. Itineraries must be booked before July 31 for travel up to August 28th.

Gokhan Mutlu made headlines earlier this week after a JetBlue captain forced him to sit in the toilet for three hours on a flight from California to New York when his seat was taken by an off-duty flight attendant. Mutlu is suing JetBlue for $2 million over the incident.

On Thursday I asked who out there thought that Mutlu seeking $2 million is a little bit excessive. Some Gadling readers responded that it indeed is.

Shane said Mutlu is getting his 15 minutes of fame (which is probably over by now):

I tend to agree with you about American's being litigation crazy and you ask a great question! But a hard one to answer - he's certainly getting his 15 minutes of fame at the expense of JetBlue (rightly so) but $2 million is a lot of money and I agree that it's a bit excessive. If I was the competition I just might step up and make one of the offers that you suggested just to make JetBlue look like heels for not doing it first!

Debbie, of the curiously named blog Delicious Baby, considered the fine line of what Mutlu could have sued for, and also chimed in with her own mistreatment:

Two million seems steep for 6 hours of suffering (I'd be willing to sit on that toilet from California to New York for a mere 1 million.

It would be interesting to know how his lawyers came up with this number. 10k would have barely made Jet Blue take notice of the issue, perhaps the 2 million dollar number is more about drawing attention to the way that passengers are sometimes treated on airplanes & making sure that JetBlue sets some limits on employee behavior.

I fly a lot (and often with two small children). Flight attendants often ask me to do things that I know aren't right. I've had them make snarky comments about me nursing on a plane, tell me I can't get up to stretch in my seat area during meal service (with the seatbelt light off), refuse to give me more than a few ounces of bottled water to mix formula with (a sympathetic flight attendant sneaked me some later with the warning "don't tell anyone".)

On one particularly unhappy British Airways flight, I even had a gate agent decide that she needed to personally inspect my carryon to make sure it had "only essential items that would pass through security" and insist that I could only bring a couple of diapers for my trip from Paris to Seattle!

BrianM got a little biblical with his reaction:

Hopefully the judge is one to think about and offer alternative solutions. Personally, I like the "eye for an eye" approach on these kinds of things. Ground the pilot without pay for a month or two and refund the ticket price. Costs Jet Blue net to nothing and punishes the PERSON (not company) who generated the situation. I sure wouldn't mind seeing the flight attendant get in on some of that "no pay" action too, since she is the root cause of the whole issue.

The $2mil is just to make the company take notice. Chances are VERY good for a settlement, and I bet if anyone remembers this story after the next day or two, that's what will be seen.

More than three months after announcing a new route between JFK and Los Angeles International Airport that was to begin later this month, JetBlue announced yesterday that it was suspending the route, a move driven largely by the rising cost of jet fuel.

The route was to add a second Los Angeles airport to JetBlue's system. Instead, the airline will continue serving Long Beach Airport, to which passengers who had bought tickets to LAX are now be re-ticketed.

A spokesman for the low cost carrier told the Associated Press that while flying to Long Beach instead of LAX isn't likely to save the company much money on fuel, starting a route to LAX had a whole host of new costs associated with it -- leasing gate and check-in space, maintenance facilities -- that were not prudent to undertake at a time when the entire industry is watching its bottom lines.

New routes are seldom profitable for airlines at first. The spokesman said that in order to make LAX payoff, JetBlue would have been forced to raise ticket prices beyond what customers were likely to want to pay.

The cost in fuel to operate the JFK - Long Beach route has increased to $15,000 per flight from $9,600 since 2007, JetBlue told the AP.

No word yet when the company might move forward with serving LAX.

Think that your seat on the airplane is uncomfortable? It could be worse: you could have been Gokhan Mutlu, a New York man who just filed a lawsuit against Jetblue for making him sit on a toilet for more than three hours of his flight.

Apparently, Mutlu, who was flying on a buddy pass ticket (a free fare), was the last person to get a seat on his recent journey. A flight attendant on a non-revenue ticket was also on the aircraft, but she gave up her real seat to sit in the jumpseat during the flight so that everyone could fit.

But when she got uncomfortable, the pilot came back and asked Mutlu to relinquish his seat, telling him literally to "go hang out" and directing him to the toilet. When he objected, court papers say that the pilot apparently said that "he was the pilot, that this was his plane, under his command [and] that [Mutlu] should be grateful for being on board".

After nearly three hours in the lavatory, a flight attendant returned to tell Mutlu that he could return to his seat, but at that point, my wager is that he was pretty ticked off. The lawsuit was filed for over two million dollars. Jetblue should be glad that he didn't sue for more.

How much can an airline save on fuel costs just flying a little slower?

JetBlue reckons that by adding two minutes to each of its flights, it saves $13.6 million a year. Southwest is now extending most flights from 1 to 3 minutes, and says it will save more than $40 million. Northwest says it saved about $530 by flying 532 mph instead of 542 mph on one recent Paris-Minneapolis flight (that added eight minutes to the journey).

The Associated Press mentions these figures in a piece about how some carriers are choosing to go it a little slower in this era of insane fuel costs. With jet fuel prices up some 73 percent, to $3.54 a gallon, adding a few extra minutes to normal flight schedules is just one of the ways airlines are coping, along with levying higher fuel surcharges and, of course, increasing fare prices.

United is looking at special software to help pilots choose better routes and speeds and says the software could save the company $20 million a year.

Not all airlines say they have adopted a slowdown approach in order to save on fuel costs. American Airlines, for instance, says it wants to maintain the integrity of its schedules, whatever that means.

It doesn't seem that customers mind too much. Many are surprised to find out that their flight was a tad longer, and they usually agree that a few minutes is not really that big of a deal. Besides, these slight increases in flight times are built into the advertised schedule, along with taxi time and the like, so we probably wouldn't know it anyway.

Would you pay for extra legroom? JetBlue is betting you will, and plans to roll out an "upsell" program to offer more leg room on your next flight for an additional cost. AP reports,

"[JetBlue's CEO] said JetBlue, based in Forest Hills, N.Y., soon expects to roll out a program called "even more legroom" that will offer passengers in the first few rows and emergency exit seats of its larger aircraft additional space for an added fee. A spokeswoman declined to provide details of the plan, but Barger made it clear the single-class carrier is not planning to start offering business-class service."

Why not? If there's a demand for it -- and I'm sure there is -- why not allow people to pay extra for the features they want? I really like the a la carte trend in the airline industry -- I enjoy paying less for my flight, even if that means I don't get to eat the rubbery piece of chicken I didn't want in the first place.

But when JetBlue goes this route, I think they should offer the same service in the opposite direction: give me the option of having less legroom (my Dad went to school with him) for a cheaper fair. Go ahead, cram me in the back of the plane with my knees to my chin, I don't care. If it costs less, I'm game.

I've been rather harsh on US airlines lately, especially the all-purpose @$!%-hole that is US Airways. So since I don't like to be a squeaky wheel--all the time--I'm going to switch it up and wax eloquent about JetBlue for a bit.

I just took their JFK to Pittsburgh flight, and it turned out to be one of the best flights in recent memory. That's not saying as much about JetBlue's performance as it is about the sad state of American aviation.

But props to Jetblue anyways. They already had something like 40 channels of free satellite TV on this flight (which was only an hour in the air). The pilot also had the courtesy to come into the cabin to make his initial announcement. The two flight attendants were very nice. Oh, and the headphones and snacks were free (looking at you, US Airways). Best of all, the flight was 50% cheaper than the next available one.