There are plenty of tales lamenting the race to the bottom in amenities and service for passengers in the United States. But that is not the entire story. Indeed, there are some markets where competition amongst carriers is working to increase the options available to travellers. Not only are there more choices now in these markets, the offerings are getting better.
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Some notes from United’s open house with frequent flyers
Yes, getting to drive the deicing truck was the highlight of my visit to United Airlines last week. But that was on Thursday; Friday offered up the opportunity to meet with a number of executives from the company and ask pretty much any questions we wanted of them. Sure, not all the questions were answered […]
American Airlines announces updates to long-haul fleet
American Airlines announced that they are moving forward with a retrofit of their long-haul fleet, updating the cabin interiors to improve the premium cabin experience. Mostly. The upgrades will expand the deployment of the new business class product, previously announced for the 777-300s which the company will begin receiving later this year. It will also mean […]
United p.s. retrofit date targets sighted
Several months ago United Airlines announced that they would be changing the configuration of the 757-200 aircraft they have running in their "premium service" routes between New York City‘s JFK airport and both Los Angeles and San Francisco. The changes include removing the first class cabin and replacing the business class seats with the flat-bed models […]
Another potential setback for LiveTV’s in-flight internet service
It seems that in-flight entertainment and connectivity provider LiveTV just cannot catch a break in getting their in-flight internet product to a deliverable state. First there was the Kiteline product, built on the back of the old Airfone bandwidth spectrum and only ever live on a single plane. That project fell apart when they were […]
United announces significant investments to in-flight product
United Airlines CEO Jeff Smisek has stated a few times that the company had some deficiencies in their in-flight product, bits that would be addressed as part of the merger process between United and Continental. The first of many bits detailed on that topic was the announcement that Economy Plus would be expanded to the […]
JetBlue to offer awesome in-flight broadband – eventually
JetBlue has made a big splash today with their announcement of an impending in-flight internet offering. The service, leveraging the Ka spectrum of satellite connectivity form provider ViaSat, will offer significant bandwidth and a broader coverage footprint than that of ATG provider Aircell, the company behind the gogo product. Company CEO Dave Barger sums it […]
End of the line for Kiteline
The in-flight internet connectivity market has lost a competitor with the news that the Kiteline product is officially shelved. Kiteline was initially launched as a lower bandwidth cellular solution to in-flight connectivity, essentially the same concept as the Aircell gogo product, but with limited features – only certain websites would work – and a lower […]
The problem with free in-flight internet
For a while now I’ve been a rather strong proponent of the theory that paid in-flight internet isn’t going to attract enough business to survive, at least not with the current pricing scheme. I just don’t think that there are enough people out there willing to pay $8 or more per flight for the access […]