On the trip to San Diego last week, I was met by a happy surprise - WiFi on my Southwest Airlines flight. Southwest Airlines is currently running trials on WiFi Service on some of its flights. I believe they currently have 3 planes equipped with this service. During the trial period, the service is free. It is satellite based internet service and appears to go through Directway (or Hughes Network's satellite network) with the equipment apparently through Row 44 (per internet searches on this topic).

On a long non-stop flight like Baltimore to San Diego, WiFi was very welcome. It was easy to connect (my MacBook Pro found it quickly) and the performance was pretty good, as long as you remember it's satellite. Your data packet goes up to a satellite in geo-synchronous orbit, back down to the ground, and then out to the internet. Speed of light suggests you'll have at least 300ms of travel time between the plane and a ground-based router (where's the FTL when you need it?). And then the time it takes to make it across the internet to wherever you're going. I saw ping times ranging anywhere from the 700ms range to over 2000ms (yes, that's 2 seconds per packet roundtrip). I wouldn't want to do interactive editing.

Throughput was pretty good too overall. Pushing a 5MB file out to my server was about 30KB/s max - varying between 20KB/s and 38KB/s. Pulling the same file across to my laptop from my server was initially about 30 KB/s, but then it looks like some sort of burst mode kicked in
after 10 second as I got about 300 KB/s after that. VPN worked, and I was even able to acid test the link by firing up our corporate ERP software from the plane. Slow, but usable in a pinch.

Other nice things - the Yahoo! sponsored web page showed flight status while you were connected, so you could see where you were along your flight. VoIP was specifically banned (hooray for privacy!) and there were warnings that large downloads would be restricted. For doing email, IM, Facebook, and even transferring files, this service was quite good.

Bad things - bring a spare battery. No power outlets. Service improved as I think people ran out of battery. And remember, the service is in beta test. Zandra also managed to get a WiFi equipped plane the day before, but on her flight, the WiFi wasn't working.

How much will it cost when it's released? The web survey suggested they were thinking $4.95. Given the popularity and the fact that several people were asking for it on the flight back, I fear the price will be higher in the end. If the service is this good, though, it might very well be worth it!

Good job Southwest! 10 thumbs up for the service!

Tags: Technology, Travel