Posted by Seth on February 3, 2012 under Internet, News, Review | 
JetBlue rolled out an updated website and also launched an iPhone app today, marking the carrier’s first foray into mobile apps and also a significant update to the online presence. The new website is much brighter (lots of orange) and the TrueBlue program gets a lot of love on the new site, showing at least three different places on the main page. I’m not a huge fan of the slide-out menus that move the rest of the page around, but there they are.
Overall the website changes appear to be mostly aesthetic, which is fine. Unfortunately, however, they managed to leave the one bit of the old site that is pretty awful on the old platform. The online check-in process is still the same flash-based mess that it has been since the Sabre migration happened. That was the one bit that really needed help and it didn’t get any. There are other bits of the site, like the airport guides, that have a rather unfinished feel to them. Hopefully those get touched up soon enough.
The mobile app, on the other hand, is a pretty solid offering overall, particularly for a v1.0 product. It offers flight booking, management, tracking and check-in functionality, all the basics that a mobile app should have to be useful. But it also has more.
The flight booking option is a slightly different interface than the other mobile apps I’ve seen, most notably in the seat selection, which comes on a scroll wheel rather than a seat map picker. I’m not sure if it is good or bad, but it is definitely different. It can also use geolocation to display default departure airports based on where you are, which is a neat feature, though not necessarily incredibly valuable.
There are some bugs in the flight booking interface still (remember, it is a v1.0 product), so scrolling down to the bottom of the page can result in seeing things like all the error messages that might be displayed if something goes wrong, but that doesn’t seem to interfere with the actual functionality so not a huge problem. I expect that those will be cleaned up soon enough.
The in-flight entertainment guide is pretty basic, but it includes a list of the DirecTV channels available and the movies showing, along with reviews. The in-flight section also has details on the food and snack options, including wine pairing suggestions such as Sauvignon Blanc with Terra Blue chips (apparently the citrus finish is great with the salty chips).
The highlight of the app, to me, is the "My trips" section. The display of upcoming trips is intuitive and offers up all the appropriate information on a single screen. The online check-in, social media share (Twitter and FaceBook) and "Pick me up" email features are also very nice. The flight review bits on the mobile app are arguably better than those on the main website.
And, there is more available via the trip interface. Tap on the city and you get access to the City Guide section of the app. In addition to airport information the City Guide includes tips on sights, dining and activities in the destination cities. Strangely, I cannot find any way to access that information other than via a scheduled trip, but it is nice to see that the company is working on making that happen. Hopefully they can add more content (it is somewhat sparse right now) and they expose it more directly in the near future. It would also be nice to see this content make it into the main website; it does not appear to be there right now.
Speaking of things that I hope to see in the future, there is a section in the flight booking portion of the site, both on the main website and the iPhone app, called "Add extras." Currently that section only says, "The flights you have selected don’t offer any upgrades," so there is nothing that can be selected but it certainly opens up a number of possibilities for things that might be coming. This is separate from the Even More Space seating option, though that might be something that is listed here. But there could be other things as well. This is definitely an interesting revelation that I’ll be keeping an eye on.
Overall the app is a much bigger leap forward than the website updates. Both are nice, but the app is very impressive, particularly in the my trips section. Hopefully the Android app which is expected soon will be similarly functional and both will continue to improve, fixing the little bugs that are showing today.
Posted by Seth on January 5, 2012 under Flying, Internet, Review, Trip Reports |
There were many, many reasons I was excited about coming home from our New Years trip to Sri Lanka. One of them was the opportunity to fly on an Emirates Airbus A380 in first class. And a couple weeks ago, when Emirates indicated that they were activating the OnAir in-flight internet service on the A380s I got even more excited as I’d have the opportunity to take the system for a spin. So here I am, somewhere over Turkey, enjoying all that the internet has to offer.
OK, not really all of it. Actually a very limited subset of it, but that’s per my choice. When they announced the plan Emirates suggested that they had a rate plan in mind that would allow customers to readily use the system for a flight to London at a very reasonable price point. When I logged on to the system these were the pricing options I was given:
The numbers are reasonable, I suppose, given the costs of providing the service. And metering the bandwidth will certainly help keep the speeds reasonable for the folks who are willing to pay to use it. The problem is that it also really limits the things that can be done in-flight. At least without paying the running overage rate. At least the sign-up process gives you the option of having the system stop at 25MB rather than just keep running (though that is an option as well). And they give you a running tally of your consumption.
The system also does some other cool things, like incredibly heavy JPEG compression on the terrestrial gateway to keep image sizes down. Still, I logged on and, before I had actually launched any apps or loaded any web pages my computer had managed to slurp up 2.2MB of data. Sure, that’s something going on with my computer (I should probably figure out what) but had I purchased the lower tiered product I’d be nearly half done.
I can check emails, but running an RDP/Citrix session to do real work would be quite bandwidth intensive. And I find myself limiting the sites I’m willing to visit, trying to save my bytes to make them last through the flight. Like I said, I cannot say that I blame them, but it is a bit frustrating to have the product price be so potentially high. I’d love to update the Travel Tools site or check on a few clients I’ve been neglecting over the past two weeks during my travels. And I’d rather do it now than in the lounge when I’ll be enjoying the spa treatment or spending the time with my wife. Alas, my expense account doesn’t run that deep.
The performance is decent enough. Most webpages are loading at somewhere around 3G speeds I’d say. A bit of latency, but it isn’t all that horrible. The jitter is pretty wild though.
Overall I’d say that the service lives up to expectations for a basic connectivity system. At this price point I’m not really in a financial position to give it a true workout doing real work, but it certainly is effective for the basic stuff. And if you can keep your data consumption below 25MB (which is harder than it sounds), the price for international travel, considering the systems that are involved, is actually pretty darn good.
Posted by Seth on December 24, 2011 under Internet, News |
In-flight internet provider gogo filed the necessary papers to raise $1MM in an IPO last week. Yeah, it was the last business day before Christmas so perhaps they hoped people wouldn’t be paying too much attention, but that’s rarely the case. Of all the numbers, perhaps the most significant in their filing is the uptake rate, a number that the company has been loathe to release previously. And now it is pretty clear why.
A quick bit of analysis from APEXMary and NYCAviation suggests that the uptake rate is <5%. Yikes!
To be fair, there are plenty of aircraft operating on routes that are simply too short for there to be any reasonable demand. That isn’t going to help the uptake numbers at all. But they’re quite proud of the number of planes with the system installed so they need to account for that. And the cost to equip the smaller planes is not likely particularly cheaper than the cost for the big planes. And they’ve got most of their airline partners locked in to 10 year contracts, to there is plenty of time to continue growing the revenue.
Another interesting number is that they are realizing about $0.41 per passenger. The good news is that this number is a huge increase over the $0.26/passenger for the same period the previous year.
Also interesting is that about half of their revenue (though mostly on the equipment side, not the services side) is from business aviation. And that side of the business realizes about $1,800/month in revenue per aircraft.
The company has grand plans and a pretty solid technology path for going forward. But it remains to be seen if they can keep the growth up long enough to actually become profitable. Raising $100MM from the IPO will certainly help extend the timeline to realize such, but the new technology implementations are going to be capital intensive again so that will likely be a challenge to those numbers.
Plenty of interesting data to mull over this holiday season.
Posted by Seth on December 17, 2011 under Internet, News |
It is generally hard enough to figure out if you’re getting a good deal on airfare or not. Figuring out if any particular fare really is the best fare or not and what the alternatives are is not a trivial task. This past week has seen a number of changes in the airfare search landscape, all of them negative for the traveling public. Things are getting worse, not better.
First up it was FareCompare changing the way they display data. Most notable there is that they removed the "Flyertalk’ search engine from the site. That engine was great for listing all the fares from a particular departure point, filtered by carrier, alliance, destination region and other factors. The reason provided for the change was a massive back-end upgrade to comply with new fare/fee disclosure rules coming soon, theoretically a positive change for consumers. But that doesn’t change the fact that the short-term impact is quite negative.
Next up, ITA Software, now a subsidiary of Google, finally pulled the plug on the original Matrix search engine. The old matrix was simple, lightweight and speedy. The new one is none of those things. Yes, the new Matrix still can do most of the same searches that the old one could. But none of them are as fast and none are as easy, either to enter or to browse the results on. Combine that with the search results taking noticeably longer to be returned and that’s another major downgrade for customers. The old matrix was used in many of the Travel Tools site resources and I’ll be working on porting that content to the new matrix as I find time.
Strike three came this morning when Travelocity pulled the plug on their flexible fare search engine. This was a great tool for listing all the published fares in a market, reading fare rules and otherwise comparing the fare you were seeing against what could possibly be offered. Now it is dead. This also happens to be the underlying source for the Travel Tools Flexible Fare Search and SWUable Fare Search tools; both are offline right now as a result of this change and, again, I hope to have both back online soon.
Three major blows against the traveling public, all the week before Christmas. Happy holidays, indeed.
Posted by Seth on December 16, 2011 under Internet, News |
Qantas announced today that they will be fitting their Airbus A380 aircraft with the OnAir SwiftBroadband connectivity suite, providing in-flight internet connectivity on trans-Pacific flights between Australia and the United States. The move brings WiFi connectivity to the fleet type but not GSM/GPRS mobile services so there will not be the option for in-flight voice or SMS/text services. The service trial is expected to start in February.
This is a similar system to that which Emirates will be using on their A380 fleet as announced earlier this week. It will also allow Qantas to remain competitive with United Airlines, which has announced intentions to outfit its entire fleet with WiFi, including the 747s they are flying to Australia.
No word on pricing yet, and the trial in February is for "business and first class passengers" according to one report, though I don’t know how they’ll keep the WiFi signal only on the upper deck. More details as they come out.
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Posted by Seth on December 12, 2011 under Flying, Internet, News |
Emirates has announced the activation of the OnAir in-flight internet service on their Airbus A380 fleet. The service, available today on 11 of 19 and installed from the factory on new deliveries starting in mid-2012, will allow for WiFi data service as well as GSM voice and data services for mobile phones.
The price-point for the service ranges from ~$7.50-$15, depending on the device type and amount of data consumed. They expect that the plans will more than meet the needs of their users based on testing they have performed over the past several months. The prices are lower than what Lufthansa charges for their services across the Atlantic so that should help with customer adoption.
Hopefully the A380 I’m flying in January is one of the 11 with the service active. I’d love to give it a try at that price point.
More from Emirates on the announcement here.
Posted by Seth on December 8, 2011 under Flying, Internet, News |
Since they first started offering in-flight internet service gogo has been toying with various pricing schemes to try to attract more customers. After starting with just a single flight option they’ve increased to multi-flight deals, day passes and two different monthly passes, one for a single carrier and one of all carriers where the service is available. Now they’ve added another option: a full year of service on Delta for $400.
Yes, this price is a discount from the cost of buying the service on a month-to-month basis. But only $20, or less than 5% savings. Take a month off – like maybe a vacation or something where you leave the country – and you’re actually paying more for the internet under the yearly plan. Ouch.
I get the idea of bundling up products and offering bulk discounts. I think that, when done right, they are a great way to increase sales for a product. But I also see very little value in paying such a high rate in advance, especially when the chances to realize the value of the discount are potentially limited. Too much risk and not enough potential savings.
Then again, my travel patterns are sporadic enough that committing to something on the same carrier for an entire year is never a good idea. Even my status earning comes from many partner flights. I suppose if you really are stuck on the same carrier every trip of every month (and that carrier happens to be Delta) it might not be so horrible. But still some real risk there.
Posted by Seth on November 9, 2011 under Flying, Internet, Trip Reports |
I have never really felt that the value proposition of the gogo service was particularly great. The cost of the service is generally high and the service quality has not been spectacular. Still, on my flight home this past Monday I had some work to get done and doing it on the plane would save me a few hours. Plus it was billable time so I could easily justify the cost of the service for the sake of getting the billable revenue. So I gave it a try.
Shortly after departure from LAX I opened up my laptop and signed on. I paid the fee and tried to connect to the services I needed to get the work done. Performance was, sadly, poor. Web pages were timing out and the non-web services I needed to use were barely functional. I loaded up speedtest.net and gave it a go. The numbers weren’t pretty:
Ouch.
I tweeted the results and the gogo twitter account got back to me right away, suggesting that I wait a few minutes and try again. Or I could contact their chat support online. A few minutes later the numbers were no better:
Time to contact support.
I explained my situation and went back and forth on the details with the chat folks. Ultimately, this was the conclusion we came to:
You’re on a busy route; it’s possible there is a large number of users on your flight, which can affect speeds. Unfortunately, we’re not able to ‘fix’ bandwidth issues, as the factors that can cause them – including location relative to our towers and the number of users on your flight – are all outside our control.
Not so helpful, actually.
They offered me a freebie for the next time I need to use the service, which I guess is OK, but given that it barely works on the flights where I’d actually want to use it I’m not so sure what the value is there.
I’m not so surprised by this problem; last time I tried to use it I had similar performance issues. Then I blamed it on the fact that more folks were using it because it was free that day. Apparently that’s not the issue at all. Oh, and it wasn’t just me. Runway Girl was having similar troubles on her westbound flight; we tweeted about it a bit.
In the end the service just doesn’t work for me, at least not well enough that I’m willing to pay for it. So I’ll be saving my money and reading or writing on the planes instead. Probably better for me overall anyways.
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Posted by Seth on November 7, 2011 under Hotel, Internet, Trip Reports |
Yesterday morning I found myself in need of a hotel in or near Burbank, California. No big deal, right? I did my typical search across a few different sites (ended up booking via hotels.com because I was redeeming my Welcome Rewards points) and found a room at the Ramada by the airport that was the right price and got decent enough reviews (though mine won’t be so glowing, I expect). Once I had that as a basis for my price comparisons I did what I normally do next – check the page of the hotel operator to see if they’ve got a better deal or a best rate guarantee I can take advantage of. And that’s where they lost me.
Perhaps more appropriately I should say that Ramada lost Burbank. Typing Burbank, California into their search engine returned the following map results:
Apparently we’re moving Burbank 300 miles northwest this weekend. Go figure.
Not the first random hotel booking site that I’ve found cannot get geography and I got around it (searched for Los Angeles and scrolled up the map to Burbank) but pretty impressive that they can fail so badly.
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Posted by Seth on October 27, 2011 under Internet, News |
There was plenty of news in this morning’s quarterly earnings call for United Airlines. As per usual, most of it was focused on the financial numbers but there were a few interesting bits that came out which are actually of interest to passengers rather than investors. Wedged between a screed about potential new taxes on the industry and mention of aircraft retirements was a very simple statement by CEO Jeff Smisek: Wifi is coming to the mainline fleet.
I was actually caught a bit off-guard by the comment and haven’t seen the transcript yet to confirm if he qualified that statement with the word "domestic" but apparently that doesn’t matter much as rumors surrounding the announcement suggest that it quite likely has potential to be a global deployment. That’s HUGE.
Subsidiary Continental has been dancing with LiveTV for a few years now, trying to get some in-flight internet into service from the provider. LiveTV hasn’t been able to deliver, however, and that’s been quite frustrating. The recent successful launch of ViaSat-1 will allow LiveTV to get their service up and running next year but apparently that’s not sufficient for United; they’re moving on. At least for part of the fleet. Apparently the new announcement might only be for the subsidiary United portion of the fleet, with LiveTV keeping the Continental portion.
The winner of the contract is apparently Panasonic Systems according to Runway Girl, who has great sources for this type of information. Panasonic currently supports in-flight wifi via a Ku-band satellite network. This is slower than the Ka-band service that LiveTV/ViaSat are launching but it is also available today. And Panasonic has announced that they will have a combination Ku/Ka antenna available reasonably soon which should allow the product to scale up as the network options become available. Oh, and Panasonic has a partnership with ViaSat similar to LiveTV so they might even end up using the same satellite but via a different provider.
Definitely a huge development in this space with lots more details to come.
Posted by Seth on October 19, 2011 under Internet, News |
LiveTV, the in-flight connectivity subsidiary of JetBlue, took a major step forward in their efforts to provide satellite-based Internet connectivity today with the launch of ViaSat-1 from the International Launch Services facility in Kazakhstan. The launch gets the satellite into orbit over the United States and provides the necessary signal coverage and bandwidth capacity to allow for the trial of the service in the aircraft in the coming months and its eventual deployment. The service will run in the Ka spectrum band which provides more bandwidth and lower operating costs than the Ku-band which is currently in production with Row44.
Next up is confirmation that the satellite actually is successfully in orbit and that it is functioning correctly. But, for now, everything looks good on the launch.
In addition to JetBlue the service is going to be used by United Airlines subsidiary Continental as well.
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