Mile High Club

So I finally did it.
I have always wanted to get some in the sky… And it was glorious.

Sorry, I was intentionally being a bit misleading…

I did get “some” in the sky, but that “some” is WiFi access. I am actually online somewhere over the Midwest right now. Not quite the Mile High Club you expected, but I just couldn’t resist it.

A service called GoGo, part of Aircell, recently signed a deal American Airlines to provide WiFi services on all flights between JFK and either SFO, LAX, or MIA. Its $13 for all flights over 3 hours and $10 for any flights less than that. At that price, its cheaper to get online than it is to check in a bag. The speed is pretty good, but not great at 1-2 Mbps shared. It felt significantly faster than dial-up and ISDN, but not nearly as fast as my home connection and sadly too slow to stream last Wednesday’s episode of Southpark.

They have already announcing partnerships with Air Canada, Virgin America, and Delta, and are working setting up the service.. Delta is planning on introducing it to all their flights by the end of 2009.

Thankfully, they do intend on blocking Skype so the entire flight doesn’t become an incessant chatter box, but there was already way around it within weeks of introducing the service. So far I see a few other people on their laptops but no one making phone calls so we might be safe for the time being.

Anyhow, I did have a fair amount of epicurean exploits the past week in San Francisco and will be posting them up shortly.