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Will 2011 Be The Year of Long-Haul In-Flight WiFi? Virgin Atlantic Says 'Yes!'

November 30, 2009 at 11:24 AM | by | Comments (0)

It's the golden travel topic of 2009: In-Flight WiFi. Slowly, airplane by airplane, connectivity is creeping up into the skies and we love it so much we'd totally go marry it if we could. Now that WiFi for domestic flights is well on its way, the discussion has turned to the feasibility of and the technology needed to get in-flight WiFi up and running on international flights, specifically long-haul.

Lufthansa recently announced that they've already got the goods with their retired "FlyNet" service, a broadband internet connection that they had running sporadically between 2004 and 2006. With the announcement that Lufthansa will be re-inroducting it on flights in mid-2010, other international carriers are sitting up and taking notes. So who's next on the long-haul, in-flight WiFi queue? Virgin Atlantic, of course.

Last week, Virgin Atlantic asked their Facebook fans (and we're guessing regular passengers on flights) a few questions about their connectivity desires. Questions like "How would you like to use your [personal electronic device] onboard?" and "How would you prefer to pay for the usage of Internet onboard?" left no doubt as to Virgin's ambitions.

In response, Virgin posted a thank you video from Chris Birch, the head of Products & Services for Virgin Atlantic. He says "the first opportunity that we're going to have to do anything about [in-flight wifi], which you will see—which will be up in the air, would be in 2011 which is when we've got new aircraft being delivered." It's more than a year's wait away and they haven't finalized plans to go through with it, but the news is exciting nonetheless! And with orders for six Airbus A380s on the table, they'll sure have the passenger capacity to make good use of it.

Related Stories:
· Virgin Atlantic mulls in-flight wifi connectivity for 2011 deliveries [FlightGlobal]
· Lufthansa Resurrects Their 'FlyNet' For Long-Haul In-Flight WiFi [Jaunted]
· In-Flight WiFi coverage [Jaunted]

[Plane photo: wicho]

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