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Gogo announces agreement with Air China, will begin live trials in early 2012
Your somewhat boring flights between cities in China are about to get a little less boring. Wireless in-air entertainment outfit Gogo has announced that the company has reached an agreement to provide a trial of its service on Air China flights. The first live trial on a commercial flight was conducted on November 15 on a Boeing 737 en-route from Beijing to Chengdu and live trials are expected to continue through the first quarter of 2012. Gogo is currently available on in-flight entertainment systems and can be installed on an aircraft overnight. Now if Gogo could provide full service for the 13+ hour flight from New York to Beijing and your laptop or smartphone's battery would last for that duration, you'd be set.
Japan to ban Wi-Fi gaming on planes
Wired's Game|Life passes along word from the Yomiuri Shimbun that "Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport plans to ban local wireless gaming from flights," because the Wi-Fi signal could allegedly interfere with airplane instruments. That's odd, because Lufthansa has been offering in-plane Wi-Fi service to its fliers since early 2003, and we don't remember hearing about any navigational problems or horrific plane crashes being caused by the system. The FAA agrees that in-air Wi-Fi is safe -- they approved a United Airlines plan to offer a similar service back in mid-2005.We suppose it's better to be safe than sorry when dealing with potentially plane-crashing communications interference, but we'd still like to see some definitive evidence of the harm caused by our little portable systems before giving up our in-air wireless multiplayer.
