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 26, 2009 under Internet |
Alaska Airlines expects to have in-flight internet service available fleet-wide by the end of 2010 according to Craig Chase, Manager of Product Development and Market Research. While they haven’t announced a formal contract with provider Row44 yet, that seems to be the logical choice based on the current testing that the two are performing on one of Alaska Air’s planes today and the additional work that they are performing together to gain certification for the Row44 hardware on the other plane types in the fleet.
A deal with Alaska Air would be the second major carrier for Row44 and would mark the end of the US-based in-flight WiFi game in many ways. All the other major carriers have announced plans of some sort for connectivity over the next 18 months or so. Not all of them will have something actually in place, but they’ve all made it clear what their plans are.
Of the announced plans, only Continental is really up in the air right now. The carrier is still looking at a trial of the LiveTV Kiteline service, expected to start late this year or early 2010, pending availability of the service. Pretty much everyone else has some plan announced to be in deployment or completed.
Of course, there is still the issue of whether the providers are going to be solvent at the end of 2010, with rumors swirling around AirCell after a decent number of layoffs there recently. Eventually someone is going to figure out how to offer the service profitably and it’d be great if that were sooner than later.
Posted by Seth on August 7, 2009 under Internet |
In-flight Internet service in the United States has been dominated by one name – gogo. Their service is being adopted rapidly across the country, with 8 carriers on board right now, many of which are committed to installing the service on their entire fleet. Fortunately, there is finally some competition in the market. Sortof.
Row 44 has finally received approval from the FCC to have their relay system installed on airplanes operating in the United States. Row 44 uses satellites, not terrestrial systems, so their coverage capabilities are significantly greater than those of Aircell’s gogo product. Row 44 also has permission to operate in Canada and Mexico, meaning that an equipped plane can provide coverage throughout North America. Not too shabby.
The only problem they’re facing is that they don’t have any customers yet. Both Alaska Airlines and Southwest have been trialing systems from Row 44 but neither has committed to a larger deployment. You can bet that Row 44 will be pushing hard for one of them to commit now that the systems are legal, but it is hard to know if that will happen anytime soon.
The other really nice thing about Row 44’s Ku-band satellite service is that it can integrate seamlessly with existing global satellite coverage. These are the same systems that were being used in the Connexion by Boeing systems back in the day, and now they might be coming back in a hurry. It would not be all that surprising to hear that the first customer for Row 44’s systems is not a US-based company. Lufthansa has been very keen to get in-flight Internet back in service on their long-haul fleet.
This is definitely an exciting development in the world of in-flight connectivity.
Posted by Seth on April 27, 2009 under Trip Reports |
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| Freddie Awards emcee and all-around frequent traveler guru Randy Petersen prepares to take the stage at the 21st annual awards ceremony |
The purpose of last weekend’s trip (as much as I can claim it had a purpose) was to attend the 21st annual Freddie Awards in Ft. Lauderdale. The awards ceremony is run by the folks at Inside Flyer and is designed to recognize and celebrate the loyalty programs of the airline and hotel industries. It operates in association with the Frequent Traveler Marketing Association annual meeting so that brings a lot of folks in to town for the event. Most are associated with one of the loyalty programs, one of the retail reward providers (the folks from SkyMall were a major sponsor, for example) or the folks who actually design and build programs and operate them for the carriers (more on that in another post). And then there was me and about 75 other frequent travelers. Inside Flyer is kind enough to open up the award ceremony to the travel community at large, and that means I got to attend and rub elbows with all of the above industry professionals. I was able to ask a lot of questions and even get answers to some of them. It was very interesting.
Oh, and they gave out some awards, too. Some of the results were very logical and some were quite surprising. Here are some thoughts on a few from each of those categories.
In the Americas Alaska Airlines won the award for program of the year. This was not a huge surprise to me. Their program is great for folks who fly on a variety of carriers (as long as they are an Alaska partner) and that partner network is pretty broad. There is definitely value to be had there.
The surprises (to me) came from the wins in the programs outside of the Americas. Etihad (United Arab Emirates), Virgin Blue/V Australia (Australia) and Jet Airways (India) all won awards; some of them won more than one. These programs all seem to have moved away from what would be considered a traditional reward structure in the United States or Western Europe. Travel rewards are still a significant part of the programs, but the programs are increasingly augmenting their programs by offering retail merchandise and other benefits to their members. The retail rewards may not have the flash and glamour of long-haul premium cabin rewards (generally the best cash value rewards out there) but they are something that they customers can get with smaller numbers of points, without inventory limitations and generally they seem much more readily accessible.
Ten years ago frequent flier programs were much more focused on providing incentives to continue or increase travel on a particular carrier, but they were targeted at the folks who were already traveling a lot. Today the programs have a much broader target audience and that has significantly changed the focus and the types of rewards out there. And if the results from the Freddie Awards are any indication, the masses are not looking at travel rewards as their main redemption target. That is good news for the carriers – the retail rewards are generally actually profitable for the carriers to redeem – but bad news for travelers looking for the high value travel rewards. As more programs shift towards cash-value type reward schemes the premium tickets become ridiculously expensive, even if the inventory is greater.
US-based programs are acknowledging this development in the market in a big way. Virgin America built their eleVAte program around this concept and every indication I’ve see so far suggests that jetBlue’s new incarnation of their TrueBlue program due out later this year will follow this path as well. The legacy carriers are rolling out shopping malls, auction sites and and other retail redemption options. Marriott has long had retail redemption as a prime option for their points and American Express’s Membership Rewards program is geared toward merchandise redemption almost more than they are towards travel rewards. Things are not moving quite as quickly in this direction for the legacy programs, but they definitely recognize the value of this approach and they are certainly happy to get the points off their books while not losing money doing so.
Such a shift does pose a significant risk to the programs, particularly the airlines. For several carriers the best income stream they have these days is their credit card partners and the revenue they realize from selling those points to partners. Billions of dollars are moving around on those transactions. Should the public decide that the value of the points no longer justifies collecting them the airlines will suffer as the credit card companies buy fewer and fewer miles. Of course, with more and more people choosing to redeem their miles for merchandise and the like the risk may not really be so significant. But it is definitely something the carriers have to account for.
The industry is definitely showing trends of shifting and the proverbial writing may be on the walls, or at least starting to appear. Of course, in the mean time I’ll still be redeeming my miles for more travel. After all, I don’t really want more “stuff;” I want the adventures and memories that travel offers me.
Posted by Seth on March 22, 2009 under News |
A couple bits of news on the “fee” front from over the weekend. Good news out of Oz as Qantas has cut one of the more irrational fees they have. Not so good news out of Chicago, however, as United added a somewhat significant fee to their arsenal, cutting a benefit that many travelers have taken advantage of for years.
First, the good news. Qantas, for reasons that I don’t quite understand, had a fee for joining their frequent flier program if you were a resident of Australia or New Zealand. Nothing like setting up a scheme to encourage loyalty and then charging folks a premium to join. Qantas finally appears to have gotten smart on this front and plans to cut the fee out of their scheme. They are also increasing their partner earning options, adding Woolworths and a number of restaurants into the fold. That’s good news down under.
United, on the other hand, has made another decision in an effort to shore up their books. For many years airline passengers in the United States have been able to buy tickets at any point, knowing that the fares might drop and that they could call the airlines and get a refund or credit for the difference. Over the past several years many airlines have cut that benefit. Specifically they charge the going rate of their “change fee” on restricted tickets. Most change fees these days are at least $150, which means that a fare has to drop a LOT for this type of deal to be of value. As of March 20, 2009, United has joined the ranks of the airlines charging for this sort of change. They did it very quietly, adding a note about the new “administrative fee” to the fine print in their fare rules on Friday afternoon. This has upset a number of customers (at least the ones who have figured this out over the weekend).
United is the last of the legacy carriers to apply this policy, so they aren’t alone by any means. There are still a few airlines that offer such a deal – jetBlue, Southwest and Alaska Airline – but overall it is a benefit that seems to be disappearing rapidly. And I’m completely OK with that. I’m sure that I’ve benefitted from the program at some point in my life. I don’t really remember it, but I am sure I did. It seems like something I would have paid attention to. But I cannot figure out why this sort of policy is really a great thing. I buy tickets when I’m happy with the price and don’t if I’m not. I get that it does take away one little chance that the customer has to get something back from the airline, but that is part of the game in my view. I don’t expect to pay them more when the fare goes up after I’ve bought my tickets, so why should I get money back if the fare drops?
The real question is whether this will help or hurt their revenue flow. There are probably cases of people spending money to confirm the ticket knowing that they can get a voucher if the fare drops, likely using yapta.com as a resource to know when that happens. So that was revenue now with vouchers issued later. If this policy change causes any drop in bookings that will mean a loss of “now” revenue though less lost future revenue, too. Plus the potential increased revenue of people paying the fee. Of course, as quietly as this happened I doubt that many people at all will notice or that it will really affect anything adversely for United, even as many frequent travelers cry wolf.
Posted by Seth on February 26, 2009 under Internet |
The battles between in-flight internet service providers are rather entertaining. The two main players, Row44 and Aircell (provider of the gogo service) are after each other like a couple of rival kids on the playground, constantly asserting themselves as the better option and working behind the scenes through lawsuits to scuttle the other. But beyond that bickering, Row44 has finally taken to the skies, with planes in service for both Southwest and Alaska Airlines.
Southwest has four planes operating with the service and is very excited about it. They are offering the system to users for free while they evaluate its performance and impact on the planes flying around. At least one industry insider has been out on one of the equipped Southwest planes and has some comments about its functionality, mostly positive. Still, there is no indication as to when (or even if) Southwest will be expanding the service across their fleet. Still no in-seat power available from Southwest, so hopefully you’ve got plenty of battery life available for your trip. Oh, and on the content front, they do acknowledge that, “As is common on many other public networks, we will attempt to filter indecent content.” Giving it the old college try, I see.
Among other in-flight internet providers out there, Aircell has also been making great progress. They are turning out one Delta plane a day, which is pretty impressive. Of course, Delta has a sizable fleet to work through, but this has been their plan for a while now, so good for them getting the service deployed.
LiveTV, on the other hand, hasn’t been making such great progress. The jetBlue subsidiary has a pretty stable and reliable product for their TV systems in North America, but everything else they are working on seems to be significantly delayed. They are going to be the provider of in-flight TV systems for Azul, the Brazilian carrier founded by jetBlue founder David Neeleman. But they are apparently having some trouble tuning the antennae just right for working in Brazil, slowing their deployment down there.
LiveTV is also running a bit delayed on getting the Continental LiveTV system up and running. This is a next-gen system (LiveTV3) and has some pretty amazing features, including on-screen guide and 80 channels to choose from. And it is a couple weeks delayed now in getting activated on the initial test plane that Continental gave to the LiveTV folks to work on. The good news is that a Continental maintenance engineer in Orlando is reporting that he’s seen the new plane and that it appears to finally be ready to go. Of course, now that the innards are all set they have to apply to the FAA for a certification of the modifications and that will allow them to deploy on additional 737-900ERs. That certification is expected to take about 30 days, so we’re looking at late March before these really start flying. The other interesting thing about the FAA certification process is that it is required for each plane type. As Continental intends to provide this service on several different types (757-300, 737-700, 737-800, 737-900, 737-900ER) they will have to undergo the certification process for each type, including having the plane out of service for the 30-60 days that the install and FAA processing takes. They’ve got the spare capacity, but it will be a bit of time before they can really start popping these out for the fleet. They announced that they expect to have it fully deployed by May 2010 or so; hopefully they can still hold to that date.
And one last bit on the LiveTV front. Their in-flight “internet” offering, known as Project KiteLine, is also running a bit slowly. Continental has committed to having this service on all their planes as part of the LiveTV deployment, but it now appears that it isn’t going to happen, at least not in a timely manner. The schedule now appears to have KiteLine available late this year. And it is still going to be a very limited subset of the Internet available. At least Continental acknowledges that it isn’t necessarily the best solution for their customers. They negotiated the contract with LiveTV such that they can add a true internet provider to their planes at a later time if they desire and the demand is really there.
Phew…that’s a lot of Internet to keep track of.
Posted by Seth on November 15, 2008 under frequent flyer, News, points |
Earning all the miles is just the first part of the process in fulfilling the great dream of free air travel. Finding a flight that the airline will actually let you use the points on is a whole different mess, one that includes highly guarded algorithms and pricing structures in the revenue management offices of airlines the world over. There are services and companies that can (supposedly) help find such awards and now there is another player in the market: Yapata.com.
Yapta started off as a service that monitored fares and would send you an email if the fare on your particular flight went down. Since some airlines will give you a credit for such an event it was a pretty nice service to have available. Starting Tuesday Yapta will be adding notifications for reward seats to their program, alerting customers of such availability to help ease the booking process. They are launching the service with access to the inventory of five airlines, Alaska, Continental, Delta, United and US Airways and details for both reward tickets and upgrades.
This is a great service, assuming that it works. I’m particularly intrigued by the inclusion of Continental in the group of airlines that Yapta will have access to as Continental has historically exercised incredibly tight control over access to their reward inventory availability. Up until now there has not been access to the inventory via any public GDS system that I know of, and those GDSes are what this type of system is generally based on.
One limitation of this service is that it does not appear that it will be able to leverage the additional reward inventory that airlines make available to their most frequent fliers, those holding elite status in the programs.
The program also does not search the partners of the airlines that are covered. Each of the airlines in question has partners around the globe that can also be used to piece together a reward ticket. And foreign partners often seem to have more reward inventory available than their US counterparts, at least in my searches. This service will likely be more useful for domestic travel than international ones, while the best value from mileage redemption remains in long-haul, premium cabin international travel.
There is an interesting quote from one of the airlines in the article:
“The technology that Yapta brings to the table, whether award tracker or flight tracker, really provides what we view as purposeful innovation,” said Mark Guerette, director of e-commerce with Alaska Airlines. “It helps the customer look for the proverbial needle in the haystack.”
I agree that it is useful information. Clearly it is of value to the passengers. And yet the airlines continue to make it ridiculously difficult to find the seats. If they really think it is such a good idea why don’t they offer it to their customers directly? If they really wanted to encourage loyalty and help the customers in that way they could.
I also find it interesting that the idea of “loyalty” that Yapta’s CEO seems to think is important is spending on a credit card:
Alerting travelers to fresh award inventory, he added, can both help airlines alleviate some of their liability for unredeemed awards and encourage loyalty among travelers.“You are more likely to continue to use your airline credit card to earn more miles,” he said, if you’re able to redeem those miles.
That’s not a bad thing for the airlines, and they sell those points to the credit card companies in transactions valued in hundreds of millions of dollars. But that isn’t really the loyalty that the airlines want. They want people paying to fly.
I’m also completely confused by the reporting of this by the NYTimes.com article that I linked to above. They provide hyperlinks to some of the websites mentioned but not others, to some of the airlines but not others and sometimes link to their internal coverage and other times to third party sites. Very strange.
Posted by Seth on August 2, 2008 under frequent flyer, News, points |
When a search for a reward seat comes up a bit short some folks will pony up for the double miles rates to ensure getting a seat on the plane. In many cases it is not a bad deal, even at the double rate, especially for long-haul flights up front, where the last-minute seat can cost many thousands of dollars, which makes 250,000 miles a pretty reasonable price. The key to those rewards has always been zero inventory controls, also known as last-seat availability. If a seat is for sale, the miles can buy it.
Well, that used to be the case.
First Delta and Alaska raised the rates on their last-seat availability rewards. And now Continental has decided to limit the inventory for some of their customers. For non-elite passengers this means that getting that elusive seat just got a bit more elusive. They say that they are only limiting in on flights with “high demand,” but I have a feeling that means any flight where only the EasyPass 2x miles rate is available. The new booking classes are R for the big seats and M for the small seats in the back. Neither of those are terrible, but they certainly are way worse than things used to be.
This is making my likely impending drop from Platinum elite to zero status next year looking a lot worse.
Posted by Seth on July 31, 2008 under frequent flyer, News, points |
Back in March Delta made some rather unexpected changes to their SkyMiles program, reducing access to reward seats from what was already a limited supply. The real kicker was that folks willing to pay double miles actually still couldn’t be guaranteed a seat on a plane like they had been previously. It was all done with expectation of “fixing” it later in the year with a three tier system that would restore that last-seat availability, among other things.
Well, the details came out overnight, and I’m actually having trouble getting too worked up about the situation. The new redemption levels for a domestic trip are 25/40/60K round-trip instead of 25/50K points. The extra 10K for that last seat is certainly less of an issue in my mind than the 15K increase to get from “Discounted” to “Expanded” availability. The last seat in Delta’s “premium” cabin to Hawaii will now cost 180K points round-trip, a price that is hardly justified by their domestic cabin configuration on the planes flying the route. Europe and deep South America (Chile, Brazil & Argentina) will go as high as 350K for the last seat up front – 125K in the back – and Asia, India and the Middle East will be 370K up front and 150K in the back. At one point someone had mentioned the fare classes that these mapped in to and the Discounted was pretty low – generally at a level where it didn’t make sense to redeem miles for the ticket – but I don’t know where Expanded comes in the alphabet soup of fare buckets.
The new rates certainly are higher, and it isn’t like all the miles sitting in your account earn interest so that pool hasn’t grown naturally. Then again, with folks collecting miles from a myriad of other sources, mostly credit card spending, folks do have more miles than ever. Delta issued 24% more miles in 2007 than in 2004. They haven’t had that many more planes flying so these additional miles are basically all CC spend related. The cast majority were sold to American Express in exchange for much needed cash to keep the airline somewhat solvent, and now they’re effectively welching on their side of the deal by raising the rates for folks to cash in those points.
Alaska Air made a similar announcement earlier, meaning that this could be a trend more than a fad. Hard to know for certain right now. At least Alaska also offered some cuts on other rates, like intra-state travel in the 5 states where they offer such routes.
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.
