Posted by Seth on January 29, 2010 under Internet, News | 
It is really, really, really official now. Southwest is going to have in-flight internet service from Row44. Yes, this would seem to be old news. It was 5 months ago that the carrier announced their intentions to go down this path with provider Row44. But both parties have been rather quiet for the past few months and there was no real progress in the contracts for actually making it happen.
That changed today when Runway Girl noted that the two had reached an agreement. The carrier confirmed the details shortly thereafter on their own blog. The contracts are signed and the hardware install is beginning. The existing four installed aircraft are no longer considered to be in “testing;” the system is officially live. They have still not announced full details on the pricing – that is still in testing apparently – but the product is definitely coming, and at a pretty quick pace. They expect to outfit 15 airplanes per month initially and ramp that up to 25 per month in the near future. That puts the at early 2012 for a full fleet-wide deployment completion date.
Related Posts
Posted by Seth on December 16, 2009 under Internet |
Continental Airlines intends to trial both the Kiteline service provided by jetBlue’s LiveTV subsidiary and also the gogo service provided by AirCell according to recent reports. This move marks the first time that a carrier has actually set up a competitive trial of multiple vendors in an effort to best serve their customers. Previous trials have been single vendor affairs, essentially determining if the system actually worked rather than figuring out if it was the correct product.
Continental has had the Kiteline product on their announced roadmap for several months now so that service isn’t much of a surprise. The decision to try out the gogo services is a new one, though one that incoming CEO Jeff Smisek intimated was possible several months ago. Smisek has stated that the carrier wanted to see if the gogo service had demonstrable financial upside before committing to a deployment. By putting both services in play at the same time it will be possible to reasonably evaluate just how much passengers like each product and the relative value of installing them fleet-wide.
As previously planned, the Kiteline service will be installed on approximately 30 of the 737-900ER (73E) aircraft. The gogo service will be installed on Continental’s 757-300 fleet which numbers approximately the same. Both systems are expected to be in service in the second quarter of 2010.
Having already used gogo a few times I’m still much more excited about the Kiteline service but having a true face-off between the two might just be the most exciting of all.
Related Posts
Posted by Seth on December 15, 2009 under Internet |
More in-flight internet connectivity is always a fun topic to discuss. And there are some rumors floating around now that Aircell may have another customer lined up for their gogo service. In the United States there are only a couple carriers still out there without any announced plans for in-flight internet and this will take another one off that list. Any guesses as to which one it will be?
The current expectation is about 30 planes outfitted by next summer in a trial period before determining what to do with the rest of the fleet. I’m hoping to get confirmation early tomorrow on this one but it is looking quite nice.
Posted by Seth on November 24, 2009 under Internet |
Yeah, it seems that beating up on Aircell and the adoption of their gogo in-flight internet service seems to be a recurring theme in the industry. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t possibly deserved. There are a ton of questions out there about just how bad their cash flow situation is. And the answers and information coming out of Aircell doesn’t seem to be helping their cause.
Runway Girl, as always, has some great information on this issue in a recent post: Does Aircell get an average six users per flight? – Runway Girl. Here’s the gist of it. Aircell is claiming 100,000 users per month, which sounds like a big number. But when you divide that out by the over 600 planes in the air with Aircell service and an average of 4 flights per plane per day the numbers are much more worrisome. The math works out to six users per flight. Just six. Considering that they are likely eating the whole cost of the installs and potentially also sharing revenue with the airlines that number just isn’t sufficient to sustain the service.
Sure, things are looking up right now with the expectation of much higher adoption this holiday season. That is due, in large part to the fact that it is free on many carriers. American Airlines, Delta and Virgin America have all struck deals of various sorts for free access (the Virgin America one is, by far, the most broad). And users definitely seem to be enjoying the service. On my recent Virgin America flight there were definitely more than 6 users online but the overall user experience suffered for it.
If the company cannot get sufficient demand at the appropriate price point such that they are going to be profitable then they are in big trouble. If they get that demand but the performance stinks they’re in an even worse position. It is hard enough to attract customers to such a service. Keeping them after a bad experience or three where the costs are not trivial is going to be pretty difficult. I fully admit that one experience does not make a trend, but I’m still worried for them.
No matter which way you look at it the future of in-flight internet is, at best, a hazy proposition. And Aircell is the fuzziest of them all since they’ve got the most exposure right now.
Related Posts
Posted by Seth on November 11, 2009 under Internet |
For a while now I’ve been a rather strong proponent of the theory that paid in-flight internet isn’t going to attract enough business to survive, at least not with the current pricing scheme. I just don’t think that there are enough people out there willing to pay $8 or more per flight for the access that is available. Of course, the good news for those few deep-pocketed (or reimbursed) folks out there is that not many others are using the service so they get pretty good performance from the system.
But what happens when the cost barrier disappears? This.
Yeah…that pretty much sucks. Maybe it was the fault of the schmuck across the aisle who thought it was a good idea to have a video chat with folks on the ground. Or maybe there are several dozen folks on the plane using the service rather than the average 10-20% that normally do. And maybe it is just that the intertubez are slower over Iowa than elsewhere in the country.
Regardless of the reason, it seems that when stressed the in-flight systems start to bend under the load. They haven’t failed outright (at least not yet) and having any free coverage is better than having none. But I also wonder what the chances are that customers paying $13 for a transcon flight will put up with the lower performance metrics that come with a system that several customers actually use. I know that I wouldn’t. Then again, I probably wouldn’t pay for it anyways.
I don’t know if the speed issues I’m seeing are really typical of a heavily loaded system but if they are then Aircell has a lot of work ahead of them to get the gogo system scaled up to deal with the utilization that they need to realize for profitability.
Related Posts:
Posted by Seth on October 21, 2009 under Internet |
In a move that hasn’t garnered nearly the same publicity as Virgin America’s announcement that they’re teaming up with Google, American Airlines has announced that they are teaming up with Lexus to provide free wifi to users of the gogo system on their flights. The AA promo is much more limited – only 7 days – and requires one to know a special promo code – 2010LexusLS – so it isn’t nearly as good as the Virgin America deal. But something is better than nothing.
Full details on the promo are here.
Posted by Seth on October 19, 2009 under Internet |
Two big stories out today about in-flight connectivity, both of which have me very excited.
The first is an announcement from Virgin America and Google that the latter is going to be sponsoring the gogo service for a two month period – November 10 – January 15. No credit card, no restrictions. Just an email address and accept the Terms of Service and you’re online. Considering that I have a flight booked my first on Virgin America) for November 11 from Los Angeles to JFK I’m pretty happy about that for very selfish reasons.
The second story comes from The Runway Girl, one of my favorite reads for in-flight entertainment news. She’s at the NBAA conference this week and has been reporting all sorts of cool stuff. The coolest, however, is an announcement from LiveTV, the jetBlue subsidiary that operates the in-flight TV systems for that carrier and Continental, among other things. LiveTV has been suggesting that there is a good chance additional in-flight internet connectivity will be coming online in 2010 and the latest news is that they’ve got an antenna ready to go for providing the service. Even better, the cost of operating the service is so low that they expect airlines to be able to offer it on a complimentary basis to passengers. Oh, and did I mention that the service would be available absolutely anywhere on the globe – including the polar regions – thanks to the fact that it uses the Iridium satellite network? This is nothing short of huge in terms of in-flight connectivity.
Now we just need LiveTV to finish up the R&D part of the project and get to the implementation phase so that I can have my emails for free in flight.
It is pretty clear that there is a demand for internet connectivity in-flight. And the fact that companies are continuing to find ways to reduce the costs to the end-user – something that will be critical to actually seeing high adoption rates – is a wonderful thing. Free is always better, right?
Posted by Seth on October 13, 2009 under Internet |
After a lot of speculation over the past couple weeks, Lufthansa has made it official: they’re bringing in-flight internet connectivity back to their long-haul fleet. And this isn’t just the old Connexion service pressed back into service. It is going to be bigger and better than that.
The new service will offer a 1 megabit internet connection to be shared by the passengers (slower than that provided by Aircell’s gogo service). It will also provide access to GSM/GRPS data streams, facilitating SMS and MMS messaging as well as internet browsing on mobile phones. From the announcement:
FlyNet is impressively user-friendly. Passengers with a WLAN or GSM/GPRS-compatible device can log on from any point in the aircraft cabin, just like at any public hotspot. Depending on the device they are using (i.e. a laptop, mobile phone or a smart phone), passengers can choose to be billed via a mobile service provider or pay by credit card. Various different price models are planned – ranging from a rate by the hour to a monthly flat rate. Passengers should also be able to redeem Miles & More award miles for the use of WLAN Internet connections. The exact price for specific products will be announced at a later date. The service will gradually become available on all Lufthansa’s long-haul flights worldwide.
So it’ll be the middle of next year before it is readily available, but the service is definitely coming. Now it just remains to be seen if they can offer it at a price point that allows it to survive. The terrestrial services seem to be suffering there and it isn’t clear that the satellite services are going to fare any better. But we can hope.
Posted by Seth on October 5, 2009 under Flying, Internet, Trip Reports |
There are three main players in in-flight internet service for US-based carriers. Aircell’s gogo service is – by far – the most dominant, with more carriers signed on as partners and more planes in service than anyone else. Then there is Row44 which has made significant progress over the past couple months, signing up two carriers (Southwest and Alaska Airlines) for fleet-wide deployment and gaining approval from the feds to operate the service.
And then there is the dark horse in the race: LiveTV. Known most for being the provider of jetBlue’s in-flight DirecTV service, LiveTV also owns a bit of radio spectrum that permits them to operate terrestrial internet services in the United States. They’ve been developing this service under the name Kiteline for a while now, including deployment on a jetBlue plane well over a year ago. Yet despite their position as the first to actually have in-flight connectivity available, they lag terribly far behind the other two in terms of deployment or plans for such.
The good news is that they have expectations of a revised product ready for deployment in late 2009, with Continental suggesting that they will put the service on about 30 planes in early 2010 for trials. And the service is expected to remain free. The bad news is that it is not a full internet solution. It is limited pretty much to only email, and specific service providers at that. There are a couple other bits – Yahoo! messenger and an Amazon shopping portal – but neither is particularly compelling.
Because jetBlue has only the one plane flying around with the service it has been difficult for me to get an opportunity to try it out. Fortunately – and completely by luck – I happened to have that plane for a couple flights this past weekend and I was finally able to see what all the fuss was about. I’ve long claimed that users will more readily adopt free crappy service over paid good service and this was finally a chance to test the former.
Connecting was pretty simple. Simply pick the WiFi network:
Watch an ad:
And then pick the service you want to connect to.
I was able to load my Gmail for Domains account no problem and my Outlook 2007 client actually connected to the Exchange server via Outlook Anywhere (aka RPC over HTTPS in Outlook 2003) without any extra effort. I was also able to load Outlook Web Access even though that isn’t one of the listed providers.
Performance was reasonable, though not particularly speedy. I was able to email a post to my blog which was nice but no direct access to the other interfaces that it exposes. No twitter. No Skype. No Gmail chat. No AIM. Pretty much nothing else. Oh, there was the Amazon interface but I really have no idea why that is being offered. I’m guessing that it is because Amazon paid for the placement. There isn’t much justification otherwise.
The other issue I was faced with is that the flight I had the plane on was headed to Puerto Rico, well away from the mainland of the United States. And since the service is terrestrial that meant that about 30 minutes into the flight connectivity dropped. That’s not necessarily a bad thing in this particular case since it was a redeye flight and I really needed to sleep. But it isn’t great for jetBlue and their ever expanding Caribbean and Latin America route networks. They are making great progress with their satellite-based service as well if you believe the PR so perhaps a hybrid solution will be out soon enough. But in the mean time the service area is definitely limited, just like the gogo service.
Ultimately I find myself struggling between the choice of a free limited-access service or a paid service providing reasonably full connectivity. I don’t particularly like any of the pricing plans that gogo has so I can’t imagine paying for them frequently (fortunately not an issue right now thanks to the plethora of coupon codes out there). But the Kiteline service really is very limited. Sure, I could get some work emails sent out, but there isn’t much available on the leisure side of the equation. Perhaps the folks at LiveTV can implement access to WAP interfaces of various sites at minimum to open up more content. Or really just about anything else. But as it stands right now the service isn’t really compelling enough for me to see it driving bookings or revenue. There is also the chance that Row44 and Southwest figure out how to be solvent using a free to the consumer with way more content then the Kiteline’s selling point of being free loses a lot of its luster.
Of course, the service that is coming out later this year is supposed to be better than the current system so maybe there will be more content available by the time Continental gets it in their planes (and jetBlue, if they decide to deploy it fleet-wide). If not, they’re likely going to have a lot of unsatisfied customers. Maybe that’s why jetBlue hasn’t gone beyond the single plane deployment. There’s also the Ka-band satellite service that LiveTV is talking about getting up and running in the coming year which should allow them to open things up for more content and bandwidth. But no guarantees that will be free.
In-flight internet is an industry that is still searching for a lot of things, from profit to customers. LiveTV and Kiteline as the third entrant is certainly going to be a player once they can get some systems deployed, but unless they improve the offering pretty significantly from what they’ve got on BetaBlue today I can’t see them as being particularly successful with it.
Posted by Seth on October 1, 2009 under Internet |
If Row44 and Southwest have anything to say about it then a free in-flight internet option might be coming to the carrier’s fleet-wide deployment of the Row44 system. The biggest hurdle to adoption for the service has been cost. People love it when it is free but as soon as a cost factor comes into play the adoption numbers drop off in a hurry. Indeed, Aircell, provider of the gogo service that is currently on several airlines’ planes, is laying off employees and seems somewhat desperate for revenue right now. So the announcements from Southwest and Alaska Airlines that they are looking at fleet-wide deployments of the Row44 product, while not particularly surprising, also raised the issue of whether they could effectively monetize the product and if the internet providers would be able to stay in business.
Word in advance of the World Airline Entertainment Association (WAEA) conference scheduled for next week has Row44 planning a major announcement: they’ve got a system that “enables airlines to monetize in-flight broadband even among passengers who do not pay for full Internet access.” That means ad-supported web browsing for those of you who don’t understand marketing-speak. They are apparently going to be announcing content and advertising partners at the conference in addition to the other details of the product.
This is HUGE. No one really likes ad-supported internet service, but it is WAY better than $10-13/flight. Plus Southwest can continue their “no fees” claims (though those are specious these days with the early check-in thing) while still providing a full in-flight connectivity option. Certainly there are a lot of details left to be uncovered and the news from the conference next week will be quite interesting to hear. If there is an ad-supported model that isn’t terribly intrusive and that is sufficient to support the providers and the carriers that would be phenomenal. I’m not so sure that the numbers will be sufficient, but it is definitely nice to see someone trying something different.
Posted by Seth on September 30, 2009 under Internet |
Lots of crazy going on in the travel world this week and I’m struggling to keep up (and keep my job). Here’s a quick summary of some of the fun stuff going on out there:
- British Airways launched their London City – JFK service (stopping in Shannon, Ireland westbound) this week. The pictures and reports from the first few days of flights are quite impressive. They even have the OnAir in-flight internet service on the planes, bringing internet back to transatlantic travel. Here’s a link to the menu and here are some pics that were tweeted on-board. Apparently they forgot a corkscrew on the first flight (they got one in Shannon) and they had a mechanical failure on day two. Whoopsie. According to BA CEO Willie Walsh the route will need a 70% load factor to break even. That’s typical of many routes but they’re trying to do it in an all-businee configuration and supposedly twice a day starting later this year. Good luck!
- British Airways also announced a new plan to charge for advance seat assignments. For just about everyone. And the charges are not trivial, ranging from $30-90 on longer flights. Folks who pay for a discounted business class ticket will be included in this scheme, and the charges are per segment. So a ticket could end up with a few hundred dollars in extra fees to get those seats assigned. Even worse, they’re only exempting their own top tier elites and full-fare customers from these fees. Not cool.
- Travel & Leisure has published their Top 10 Beer Gardens list. I’m generally not a huge fan of their lists since they tend to focus on luxe and hip more than authentic and cool, but they definitely did OK on this list, giving the nod to the Bohemian Beer Garden in Queens over the one at the Standard in the Meatpacking district of NYC. Looking forward to visiting a few more of those in the near future.
- Probably the coolest video of an airplane being assembled that you’ll see today. It is just under 6 minutes long and is just plain awesome.
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Travelers – A great read for reminding yourself that travel is as much about the adventure as it is about getting your way.
It is a lot of random stuff, but all worth a look.
