Okay, who's the dunderhead who made the decision to cycle Delta aircraft out of service to retrofit them with GoGo WITHOUT adding outlets at the same time (at least in first)? Do these people ever fly on their own aircraft?

My past three flights have had this scenario... What gives?

Wifi is much cheaper, easier, and quicker to install than outlets...

Wirelessly posted (Propel: SAMSUNG-SGH-I617/1.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 7.6))

Totally different install process. The gogo install takes a few hours, basically a bolt on. Outlets are a major retrofit.

I would settle for more outlets in the lounges. I am flying AA today and their main lounge in ORD has very few power outlets. Skyclubs are better in that regard.

Easy answer

WiFi is a cash generator & outlets are a freebee

On a long haul flight w/ a puny 2 hr laptop battery, I may not buy the wifi because there are no outlets.

The 757's or 737's that have wifi have power outlets in First.

Buy a bigger battery. I take a 5 hour and a 2.5 hour as a backup.

Buy a Mac. My almost 4 yr old MacBook gets 3 hours per charge, full brightness, on the original factory battery.

It is unclear how much DL pays versus Gogo pays for the equipment on the plane. If Gogo funds a significant portion of the equipment cost then the approach taken makes a lot of sense - little outlay by DL other then plane downtime, FAA STC and related expenses.

Also, the trend in mobile computing is longer battery life. Netbooks have been getting 6+ hours for a year now and the new ULV promise 8 - 10+ hours.

By the time any carrier was to retrofit all seats to have power, many existing laptops will be replaced with newer ones featuring longer battery life. In 5 years it is likely that many people won't need power for a majority of flights. Why invest millions into something that may not be needed in a few years?

The inflight wireless should be available for purchase in hourly increments. On a 4 -hour ATL-SAN flight I only want to use it for 2 hours max (to read the newspapers on the early morning flight.), yet I have to pay for a 4-hour flight. And to make matters worse I don't have a 4-hour battery! After taking advantage of the free trial I've decided it's not worth the expense to me.

and having the wifi active on your laptop willdeplete your battery even quicker

Uh oh... looks like its about time for the GoGo FT representative to post another commercial here...

I agree, not being able to charge up and use wifi for the whole flight does dissuade me from purchasing it. Hell, if I knew I had juice on every flight, I'd sign up for the unlimited maybe.

Since everything else is free in F, they also need to consider a way to make Gogo free for First class or Plats or something....

I'd be happy if they just put a few more peanuts in the little red bags

(has anyone asked about suggested compensation for overflying

your destination city of choice)