Last August, American Airlines decided to give inflight Wi-Fi a try on 15 domestic aircraft. The trial was successful enough that the airline has announced plans to expand the service, courtesy of Aircell’s Gogo Inflight Internet, to 300 planes by this time in 2011. Gogo turns the inside of the cabin into a hotspot in the air.
American’s trial was on 15 767-200 plans that flew between JFK in New York City and San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Miami, each day. The plan is to put the Gogo’s system–which uses air-to-ground (ATG) towers sprinkled across the U.S. to talk to tiny EV-DO antennas (pictured) on the plane–in 150 McDonnell Douglas MD-80 planes this year, followed by its 150 Boeing 737-800 planes next year. This will effectively cover almost all of American’s domestic fleet; the rest travel over water, which won’t work with Gogo.
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