US web users flying high as Europe stays firmly grounded in past

NET RESULTS:Internet availability on Stateside flights may soon be as common as pretzels or soft drinks, writes KARLIN LILLINGTON

AS I boarded a Delta flight last week from Atlanta to San Francisco, a young woman was enthusiastically handing out vouchers as passengers headed down the ramp.

I thought they were discounts for food purchases, but it turned out they were for using Delta’s in-flight internet access.

This was a first for me, but I haven’t done much air travel internally in the States in recent times. However, internet availability on flights has steadily risen in the last two years to a point where it may soon be as common as in-flight pretzels or soft drinks.

A little investigation back on terra firma revealed that a number of US and Canadian airlines are now offering full web-surfing and e-mail access facilities while in the sky via Aircell’s GoGo Inflight service.

The cost is fairly modest – $12.95 will get you online for flights longer than three hours, $9.95 for flights between 1½ and three hours, and $4.95 for flights under 90 minutes. You can also go online and book time in advance at a slight discount.

The company just announced that it has fitted out its 1,000th aircraft with Wi-Fi net access – meaning an impressive one-third of all North American flights each day now offer the ability to go online while in transit.

Users seem to like it. Budget Travel, the magazine owned by Newsweek, recently queried readers on its website about whether anyone actually used inflight Wi-Fi and, if so, whether they liked it and found the service useful. The responses were uniformly positive.

On the one hand are the people who find it helps pass otherwise dull flight time quickly as users keep busy with e-mails, chat and web-surfing. On the other are the road warriors who like the idea that they can plough through e-mails on a live connection, rather than responding offline and waiting to send once back on the ground.

As one respondent said: “If I am travelling on business, it gives me the extra time to stay caught up. If I am travelling for pleasure, it gives me the time to get ahead on tasks so I can better enjoy my time on the ground.”

GoGo has its limitations. The technology used relies on ground transmitters, and is not much different from a 3G connection, fine for e-mail or basic surfing but useless for streaming video.

The reliance on land transmitters means the service can’t be provided over oceans, nixing the possibility of service on transatlantic flights.

However, a second up and coming service, called Row 44, could offer an over-ocean service, as it uses satellite connectivity.

Southern California-based Row 44 currently supplies Wi-Fi to just one customer – on some Southwestern flights in the US. But it has just announced it has picked up $37 million in a fundraising round specifically designed to expand service internationally.

All of which raises the question: why aren’t we seeing a similar offering in Europe? There is actually a European supplier. OnAir, an Airbus-SITA joint venture, offers both Wi-Fi and mobile call capability on flights to its airline customers. Ryanair famously offered OnAir’s mobile call service (based on technology from Kerry company Altobridge) for a while, but the contract was terminated in March after the airline said it had no interest in rolling out the service across its entire fleet and would be looking for other tenders.

A glance at the OnAir website points to some contracts with various airlines, but many are limited to mobile-based services, or are on flights to the Middle East. I’ve certainly never taken a European flight offering Wi-Fi myself.

Why the fast growth in in-flight Wi-Fi in North America and the seeming reluctance to introduce it onto European flights? It would seem to me that there would be a far more enthusiastic audience for internet use in the air than for mobile calls. But European airlines don’t seem to have done much beyond dabbling in mobile telephony.

Perhaps an expansion of Row 44 into the European market – perhaps by offering the possibility of Wi-Fi on transatlantic flights – will jumpstart this niche offering over here.

I for one would love to mitigate some of the tedium of long-haul travel with net access. And if airfares were roughly the same, I’d certainly opt for an airline that would offer me net access (just as free net access from Stena is an inducement for me when picking a ferry to the UK).

Wi-Fi on European flights is surely a matter of when rather than if. But it is frustrating to see it become mainstream on one side of the Atlantic while staying a novelty on the other.