November 24, 2008 by James Oliver
Today Virgin America becomes one of only two commercial airlines to offer full Internet access to their customers. The new service, dubbed GoGo, is only available on one plane at present but if it is deemed a success, will rolled out to 24 others.
With GoGo, Virgin America passengers can do pretty much everything they can via their home connections, i.e., instant messaging, downloading video, connecting to secure networks and email. The only thing that isn’t allowed at present is voice calling via programmes like Skype.
Usage of the internet aboard a Virgin plane will cost between $9.95 and $12.95, almost a third of the cost of Boeing’s ‘Connexion,’ which was shut down in 2006 due to lack of demand for the expensive satellite-based service.
A raft of other airlines have announced similar plans to install GoGo’s internet service on their commercial flights, including, Delta, who plan to have the service up and running on a trial basis by the end of the year and installed across the entire fleet by 2009. Air Canada also have big plans, convincing Aircell to build extra Canadian cell towers simply so that they can offer the service on all domestic flights.
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