August 2007

American Airlines is hoping to become the first domestic carrier of inflight internet. American plans on working with AirCell, an Illinois based company that has been designing a system to provide onboard Wi-Fi from an antenna to the ground.

The service will probably not be free, and is expected to cost slightly more than comparable existing Wi-Fi HotSpots. It is also expected to run at DSL speeds and will be tested on American’s Boeing 767-200 planes.

However, if you are not willing to pony up for Wi-Fi, the service will still be quite useful, as American plans on offering free Wi-Fi for sponsored travel websites related to hotels, rental cars, restaurants, etc. American has not announced a date for the launch but hopes to do so soon.

I’m currently writing this at JFK International Airport, courtesy of a 10-dollar T-Mobile One-Day Express Pass. The Wi-Fi is spotty, and I spent the first hour quite frustrated as the internet at Gate 21 , Terminal 2, dropped from 11 Mbps to 5.5 to 2, and then finally disappeared altogether.

However, a quick move over to Gate 22, closer to the Starbucks, which appears to be the HotSpot center, has kicked me back up to 11 Mbps, and I’m able to download some episodes of 24. My advice, unless you are going to be stuck at JFK for a while (four hours in my case), or your gate is right next to the Starbucks, don’t bother with the JFK Wi-Fi.

A cool tip from UNEASYsilence. Apparently, Boingo is offering free wifi access in 13 airports to iPhone iusers. By hacking your browser user agent settings, you can trick the network into thinking your Mac or PC is an iPhone. this can be done via the Firefox Plug in User Agent Switcher (UAS.) Full instructions here.