Jaunted

Charles Ogilvie

JetBlue WiFi: Chatting on IM at 34,000 Feet

December 11, 2007 at 10:12 AM | 0 Comments

Our very own markj missed out on flying on JetBlue's WiFi-enabled BetaBlue, scheduling his flight just one day too early. But Virgin America's Charles Ogilvie snagged a seat on the Internet-ready Airbus today to check out the competition. (Virgin says they'll have on-board WiFi in 2008.) We managed to chat with him briefly while he was over Maryland and West Virginia:

Jaunted: Hey, Charles, it's Paul Brady at Jaunted. Forgive the pun: What's up?

Charles: Andrea Spiegel, VP Marketing JetBlue, just made a very nice welcome speech and thanked me for being aboard. The product is cool. They have three wireless access points on here.

Charles: The side of the plane is painted up with Blackberry and Yahoo. The LiveTV guys are pretty nice and have been coming over to chat.

Charles: I have two laptops open on a tray table in seat 11C (exit row).

Jaunted: Wow, do you always travel with two laptops?

Charles: I usually travel with multiple devices...They joke in the office that I have one laptop "mounted" to my arm. So far, a "no go" on my WiFi-enabled Blackberry, but I'm working on it.

We had so many other questions, but before we knew it, Charles signed out. Did the connection drop, or did we get the IM cold shoulder? Minutes later, an email arrived explaining what happened:

As we handoff from cell-to-cell, the system seems to drop offline momentarily but restores within five minutes.

If you could access Twitter, Blogger or anything besides Yahoo Messanger and Mail, you could totally liveblog your flight!

Related Stories:
· Real-Time Status of BetaBlue [Yahoo]
· JetBlue coverage [Jaunted]
· Liveblogging ANA Flight 009 [Jaunted]