Oneworld alliance member American Airlines today is celebrating its one-year anniversary of offering Aircell's Gogo in-flight broadband service to passengers.
"One year ago today, American was the first US airline to launch the Gogo service. Since then, thousands of customers traveling on American's 15 Boeing 767-200 aircraft and select MD-80 aircraft have enjoyed the onboard Wi-Fi service while flying across the United States," says American in a statement.
Since that time, other carriers have quickly adopted Gogo or made plans to do so. Aircell now lists eight customers - Air Canada, AirTran Airways, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Northwest Airlines, United Airlines, US Airways and Virgin America.
American, AirTran, Delta and Virgin America are currently offering the Wi-Fi service. American says Gogo is now available on 100 Boeing MD-80 aircraft, which constitutes two-thirds of the 150 Gogo installations scheduled to be completed by the end of 2009.
"We are excited to reach this one-year milestone and to continue our expansion of the Gogo high-speed service to customers on our MD-80s," says American executive VP-marketing Dan Garton.
"We continue to receive positive feedback from customers who use the service to stay connected while in the air. Our goal is to offer our customers the chance to continue their work or personal business while 35,000 feet above the ground."
Aircell's prices for the Gogo service range from $5.95 to $12.95 based on length of flight and whether the device is a handheld PDA or a laptop computer.
A competing product to Gogo, Row 44's Ku-band-based connectivity system, is currently being trialed by Alaska Airlines and Southwest Airlines.
Source: Air Transport Intelligence news
