American bringing in-flight WiFi to over 300 planes
By Darren Murph 
posted March 31st 2009 2:26PM
posted March 31st 2009 2:26PM
posted March 31st 2009 2:26PM
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Wish they adapted this tech sooner..
American is like the worst airline there is. I fear my life whenever I fly with them on their crappy ass planes.
What's so different about their planes compared to other airline? They're the same model, but painted differently and with minor changes to the cabin of the plane.
I actually had some pretty good flights on American this past week. Flying from Miami to Santiago the plane was kind of empty and the flight attendant told me that there was a seat with tons of leg room next to an emergency exit. Took it. And the flight from Santiago back had some pretty good food (for coach).
Now if only they'd put this WiFi on flights where it'd actually be helpful, e.g. international flights.
maintenance. This is why I hate flying. Why are we still using this crappy technology? Wings? Pshh! Get me some electro magnetics and repulsor lifts. Much safer. You hardly ever see ufos crash nowadays.
Well the only time I use them is flying to the Dominican Republic. They use A300s on those routes which are about like 20 years or older. They are being retired at the end of this year. They are just not kept in very good condition at all and the staff are extremely unfriendly. Maybe im just spoiled.. Im from England and am used to European airlnes which are much better
Laggard!? I'm an avionics engineer at AA and we were the first company to incorporate Aircell back in August. Look at your own links when in June you said that airline was testing it. We've been successfully running this for over six months on our cross-country flights. Our announcement was that we are adding it to the rest of our domestic flights. When you consider we have the largest fleet of airline airplanes in the world, I think we're doing pretty great at adapting this technology.
Can you tell the big wigs at AA to make like LAN Airlines and put TVs on every seat?
Sure you had Aircell first, but you weren't the first to announce a rollout of it fleetwide.....that would be Delta I believe.
I'm also sorry to point out you no longer have the largest fleet anymore....that would also be Delta
Well splitting hairs here... Delta Airlines has 400 and something aircraft and after their merger with Northwest's 300 and something they are the largest airline together. But Northwest operates it's aircraft as if they are still an independent airline. So that announcement of Delta rolling it out fleet wide only applies to the 400 aircraft they operate. Domestic only, of course since aircell doesn't work over water.
Last I heard is that the Northwest planes (except maybe the DC9-30/40s and 5500-Series 757s which aren't gonna be around much longer) will start getting WiFi once all the current Delta planes are done, with the entire combined fleet done by late 2010-early 2011.
You guys forgot 'Airlines' in the heading!
now if they didnt forget it, we would never get you to reply..sneaky i know
AA planes are outdated..and the maintenance lol..you guys would never fly if you really knew how well these planes were kept..
Too bad you picked a picture of a 757...
...you beat me to it brother
Haha, I just noticed that. At least they have a wingleted 757, although they definitely could've found a decent 738 pic.
I hope it is more reliable than the plug-in seat-back entertainment units and the Bose Quiet Comfort 3 headphones in AA's 767-300 international business class. We (two traveling together) had 3 defective entertainment units and 2 bad headphones to and from Zurich this month.
And tell AA the Bose Quiet Comfort 2's are much more comfortable on you ears for 7-8 hours compared to the new 3's.
Unless they are putting in an ENORMOUS amount of bandwidth, there is basically no point. With everyone using it at the same time, it will take like 10 minutes for a web-page to load.
There has never been a time when I went to an airport or hotel or motel that had free wifi, and was able to use the internet peacefully. There are always 100 people hogging all the bandwidth. In most cases I just shut my computer down and stop trying.
In addition, the wireless routers they use need to be able to handle an excessive amount of traffic.
At most, 25% of the passengers would be using it, and a lot of them would be checking their email.
It doesn't matter, AA can't go bankrupt soon enough. In flight WIFI is useless if the plane can't leave the ground. The cost of putting every passenger in a crappy hotel every night because they don't run their aircraft maintenance properly will make this a moot issue.
Just to add to my previous comment, even though they will charge for the WiFi, I cannot see anyone with a laptop and a 5 hour flight not puchasing it.
Wow.
A plane full of people talking online using Skype.
Ugh.
I believe the FAA has forbidden the use of phone communications (cell or Skype) in the air (for now).
I'll fly Southwest of JetBlue with or without wi-fi thanks. The last time I had good service on a "legacy" carrier was in the 1970's
Careful browsing your porn collections, no doubt they'll have someone monitoring the traffic.
Maybe they will not charge their Platinum members :)
Yeah, if WiFi will only be on Boeing 738s and MD80s, why did you show us a picture of a Boeing 752?
I'm just sayin'...
I think a better question would be why are they not putting it on the 757s anyway? unless engadget missed one.
It's going to COST so I wouldn't be too excited.
American sure is getting their money's worth out of those MD-80s.
Umm, that plane is not a 737 or MD-80!!!!!!!!!!!! Get your pictures right!!!
Had wireless on a cross-country (JFK->SFO) 767 two weeks ago. Worked great. Was able to connect to my company's VPN and use Remote Desktop with very little noticeable lag. Not sure how many people were using it, but I definitely saw quite a few laptops out with web browsers/email programs open.
I remember seeing the board meeting 'should we call our airline "shoot me" or "america"? lets make that decision today people'
In the end they decided on america because they'd have plausible denial if they screw up and a few crash in the sea.
J/K!
I can't turn on my electronics, but I can get wifi?
Huh? Of course you can turn on your electronics (save for radios or TVs (which I'm not sure why you would want/expect to work anyways)). A lot of new planes even have "Turn off electronics" instead of the no smoking sign now, which gets turned off above ~10k ft.
Turn off only during taxi, take off, landing.
is it just me having terrible bad luck or does anyone else have experience with AA treating you like scum of the earth? I think they need to do far more then just add WiFi....
I only use airlines for international traveling. I wish they could do this via satellite so I can have internet as I cross the Atlantic.
Once again, for the love of God, PLEEEEEEASE -- no cellphones on planes. Ever!