Originally Posted by
clubord
I have a close friend that works for one of the in-flight internet providers at another US carrier. Bottom line is the demand is much less than expected there with access rates between 11-14%. I would love to see this on the new UAL birds but would be surprised to see this happen anytime soon.
I know that US is disappointed in the usage rate, which is why they have no current plans to install it in their other aircraft. (Currently all of their A321 fleet has it.)
There are 4 reasons why I believe the usage rate is low on US:
1) Price is too high, and there is no option to buy by the hour or the minute. It's a flat-rate pricing structure, which automatically shuts out part of your target audience who just wants to quickly check e-mail and/or briefly surf the internet.
2) No power ports on US, so on transcons you are paying for 5 hours worth of service, and only getting 2 if your battery dies.
3) Bandwidth is inadequate. Case in point: My brother tried it on PHL-LAX, and he could not stream from Netflix (and then his battery died
). He said he would never buy it again.
4) The level of difficulty in using a laptop in Y.
I guess it all rolls back up to the pricing. Why would you pay for a service which is unreliable, difficult to use, and for which you will not get your money's worth? (Unless someone else is paying for it, of course.
)