thebat

If the connection is slow or choppy do you get a refund? Anything posted about 'satisfaction guaranteed?'

tjisnumbaone

LOL that is so hilarious! I would like to do that to my laptop sometime.

tjisnumbaone

As of 3/27/09, here is the wifi statistics on planes.

Aircraft 985 completed Wi-Fi installation Wednesday March 25th during a 12-hour overnight installation while aircraft 954 and 979 were inducted today (Thursday March 26th), also for a 12-hour overnight installation.

There are now 77 Wi-Fi equipped planes in the Delta fleet which is nearly 25% of our domestic fleet…

MD88 - 71 aircraft
MD90 - 1 aircraft
B757-200 – 5 aircraft

New A/C Tail Numbers in Bold:

MD88 Tail Numbers : 904-905, 907-921, 923-929, 931-933, 935, 937-939, 941, 943-948, 950, 952, 954, 957, 959, 965, 969, 970, 974-975, 979, 982-983, 985, 993, 994, 9000, 9001-9002, 9004, 9006-9020.

MD90 Tail Numbers : 9211.

B757-200 Tail Numbers : 617, 640, 690-692.

tjisnumbaone

Just another wifi update as of 4/06:

Aircraft 960 and 961 are scheduled for Wi-Fi installation Sunday night and should hit 100 Wi-Fi equipped aicraft in the next week or so. As it stands, 27.2% of Delta’s domestic mainline fleet is complete.
MD88 - 82 aircraft

MD90 - 1 aircraft

B757 - 5 aircraft

MD88 Tail Numbers : 904-921, 923-929, 931-933, 935, 937-941, 943-948, 950, 952, 955-957, 959, 963, 965, 968-970, 974-976, 979, 982-983, 985-987, 989, 993-994, 9000-9002, 9004, 9006-9020.

MD90 Tail Numbers : 9211.

B757 Tail Numbers : 617, 640, 690-692.

PDX-RDM-AVL-TPA

I had GoGo Internet on a flight for the first time tonight from ATL-LEX on an MD-88 of course. I didn't pay for the service (it's a 46 minute flight, probably less than 30 minutes of PED use) but I did check out the complimentary sites. Mainly I went on Delta's website, checked my seats for upcoming itineraries, and did some speculative reservation searching for some upcoming trips. I need to book a May trip soon and I wanted to see my options before contacting a colleague about details. And I'm occasionally tracking fares and itineraries for a couple of family trips in July/August and September.

It's unlikely that I'll bother paying for the service except in rare circumstances on some longer flights when I have something specific going on for which I need to be online, or really need to get an email message out. However, I will probably use the service to do routine checks of delta.com to look at future booked itins or need-to-be-booked itins like I did tonight.

PS. to MODS: There could be a fair amount of consolidation of Delta Wi-Fi threads. After searching for "gogo", I had several to choose from but chose this one as it seemed fairly recent and relatively generic. But there are at least a couple of other older threads that would have worked just as well.

mooper

I am curious if you would use it more broadly and consistently if you could subscribe rather than pay as you go. For example - if you could pay $49.99 per month or $99.99 per quarter for unlimited use. Alternatively, what if you could pay something like $3.99 for flights under an hour? Would that change your expected usage? What about an option to pay for a certain number of flights at once - say 20 flights for $100 or something like that? I ask because I think Delta should tweak the pricing structure (or at least add other options, similar to the ones I'm inquiring about) and I'm wondering if do so would incline people like you who avoid paying on short-hauls to pony up.

IlxPirata

I think I can answer this. The value in my mind for a subscription would be like somewhere in the $19.99 to $29.99 range, but only after they've fully outfitted their fleet. I've only been on one MD-88 thus far that had wi-fi. In order to make it truly useful, it needs to be installed on the 757's and 767's that do the transcon routes. One of the reasons that I value it at a relatively low cost is that I only see it useful on morning flights, when I'm still interested in sending e-mails, etc. On a return flight I'm usually too exhausted to care about much except relaxing with a drink and a movie or my ipod. Just my 2 cents.

bwhite

I would rather see an annual plan but it would have to be inexpensive for me to consider it. $30 to $50 per month? Not worth it for my travel patterns which tend to involve more short hauls.

IMHO - Not sure I see any value in flights under 90 minutes. There is hardly enough time spent above 10k feet on short hauls. And heaven forbid your upgrade doesn't come through, have you tried to use a laptop in coach with the current seat pitch?

For longer flights... While it was cool to do some stuff on delta.com on the one flight I've had that was gogo enabled (out of 40 segments so far this year), it would have to be economical. It's one thing to pay $12 at a hotel when you get 24 hours, but $12 for 2 or 3 hours?

I almost enjoy the down time that comes once the boarding door is closed. "Gotta hang up - they're closing the boarding door!"

So I might sign up for a $100 annual plan but my usage will be light - I just don't need to be connected 24 x 7. That is assuming they start using the 27.2% of aircraft that are enabled on the routes I fly.

IsleOfMan

I've had WiFi on my last 3 MD88 legs... ATL-DFW, ATL-SAT, and SAT-ATL. Speed for the first flight tested around 750 kbps. The second and third leg tested closer to 1.2 - 1.5 mbps. All in all, pages loaded quickly with no noticeable lag or latency. I even tried HULU and watched most of an episode of 24... 360p buffered quickly and streamed with no drops, while 480p took about 5 min to buffer and had a couple of drop-outs... then I realized I'd paid about $5 to watch that half of an episode and decided streaming video is probably not the most cost effective use of the service.

One minor annoyance... a few random sites like CNET seem to be blocked by DL and I can't for the life of me figure out why.

mooper

I agree with this. The value shoots way up once you know your flight will have it. The current hit-or-miss is annoying, but fortunately shouldn't last much longer.

I switched to a netbook (10 inch screen, 6 hours of run time on one charge) and it makes all the difference because it takes away the space and access concerns. I can get a lot done in 45 minutes, and given that it only takes 3 minutes to get going and 1 minute to shut down, worth it even on short hauls for me.

My favorite use is to watch live TV via my Slingbox, but of course not everyone has that set up.

Yup... streaming TV and video seems to work great, as long as you arent expecting high-quality resolution. I think, but I'm not sure, that they would be able to upgrade to EvDO Rev B. if the towers were upgraded. If so, then down the road if it becomes popular and crowded, bandwidth shouldnt become an issue.

bwhite

I have the Acer 10.1" Netbook and agree it is great to use on board but still have to be careful in coach - mine almost got crunched when the seat in front reclined. I also have a Slingbox @ home and use it quite a bit - DVR the local news everynight and watch it from where ever.

However the current gogo rate schedule will preclude me from using it for internet on board although I was impressed I could get to delta.com and plan my next trip.

StefanNYC

Live from MD-88 #926, flying MCO-JFK. No noticeable glitches so far, everything looks rather smooth. Trying to download a big video file to check out the speed -- a filthy 40 KB/sec, but I can't be sure it's not limited by the other end. Skype chat works, voice calling doesn't -- as promised, I guess

iTanNicNic

Had two WiFi ships today- Ship 970 BUF-ATL and Ship 941 ATL-SRQ and Delta.com failed to load on both legs from the link on the start page. It would load so I could see the name in the title bar and then just crap out- very disappointing

StefanNYC

Let's see... works OK for me here. I can even see that the miles for my flight are already in (although we have yet to start descending) ^

PDX-RDM-AVL-TPA

This is my first post from a Delta aircraft using the Gogo internet. I've logged onto delta.com before but never sprung for the full service. But today I had an important email to send, so I thought I give it a try. I did do some speedtests (speedtest.net) and got various download speeds of 0.94 to 3.07 Mbps and a consistent 0.34 Mbps upload speed. It seemed that the 2 to 3 Mbps is fairly consistent, the .94 may have come while I was downloading email or something. I was surprised at how quickly my email came across, when compared to when I use PDAnet and tether my Treo 755 and get 1 Mbps or so speeds using that.

Now to answer an old question based on one of my earlier posts about my previous usage of delta.com inflight about a month ago.


As mentioned above, today is the first time that I've had a good reason to pay the money (getting out an email). So my opinion hasn't changed based on the current policy. For me to use it, yes I think Delta would need to change their pricing policy. For me, a monthly or yearly rate is unlikely to sway me unless it's close to $10 per month or less. I just don't need it that often. My preference would be some sort of prepaid system or bulk pay system where you get a discount by purchasing a certain number of flights (or even minutes/hours) in advance, and then burn them when needed. I would pony up for this now. Otherwise, Delta/Aircell will get very little money from me. I just don't normally need to be online when I'm on a flight.