Blogging from 38,000 feet

Finding out that wifi would be offered on board my flight today from LaGuardia to Atlanta will probably be the highlight of my day. I was still under the impression, however, that because wifi on flights is still in a bit of a testing phase that it would be free 0r discounted. $10 for two hours of wifi seemed like a little much but I felt I would be doing myself a disservice by not trying it out. So here I am.

The service is provided by Gogo Inflight Internet and the sign-up process was quick and painless.

So far all pages have loaded at very decent speed. Instant Message chats are working just fine with no glitches. The real test comes in streaming music and sound. Grooveshark loaded in about 15 seconds and the song played flawlessly without having to stop and buffer. Video streaming only started to hiccup toward the end of “I’m on a Boat” on Hulu but righted itself quickly. Multiple tabs and TweetDeck run just fine too.  I wanted to try and Skype with someone to really stretch its legs but didn’t get the chance.

Overall, at least if they are charging $10, you aren’t getting half-ass slow connections. If you really have trouble going a few hours being disconnected and have some disposable income, check it out next time you fly Delta. (This is not an advertisement.)

Related:

• A good overview of each airline’s wireless offerings.
• Great post this week from Wallet Pop on expanding inflight wifi service as of late.