This is pretty cool. The American Airlines flight I’m on offers in-flight WiFi via GoGo InFlight. From the pitch from the GoGo Guy in the terminal, this is a free promotional test to see how many people actually use the service, to determine if American Airlines will begin offering it regularly. There was a tinge of desperation in his voice as he was handing out the cards, reminding everyone to please actually login to the service in flight, because they are checking to see if there is a discrepancy between the number of logons and the number of cards he handed out. It costs $12.95 for the service, normally.
Three other things I noticed: First: there’s no corresponding GoGo WiFi offering in the terminal. Lame. They should offer both in tandem. Secondly: I cannot get the service to work on my iPhone despite the guy in the terminal saying it would work Update: got it working. Third: He said to one person “If your battery starts to run out make sure you log off early, otherwise, you won’t be able to log back in with that account and continue the free trial.” Doesn’t that sound a bit fishy? Anyway, the free WiFi expires on October 31st according to the card.
I‘ve had the chance to use the GoGo InFlight service a second time since originally writing this post and wrote about it in this blog post.
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The in-flight router device most likely captures the wireless MAC address and has a very long expiry TTL in the Radius and cache. Maybe it’s just like that for the FREE trial plan, or just a Radius option they have yet to find a sweet spot for.
Thanks for the post. Did the wifi-service work ok? I just wrote a piece for Fast Company on why all wifi should be free. I think A LOT more people would use it, and this would translate into major profits. http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/gregory-ferenstein/fastminds/4-ways-airlines-could-make-flight-wifi-free
You think a lot more people were using wifi because it was free on your flight?
I honestly didn’t see a lot of people taking advantage of it. The guy next to me did, but he spent most of his online time downloading virus updates to his laptop which I thought was very odd.
It worked well for me although it did get slow a few times.