At first blush, it's another one of those, "Sure, it will happen ... eventually," type of situations. I mean does anyone envision a commercial air fleet without Internet service 20 years down the runway?
That seems unlikely, yet current efforts to get such service off the ground have produced spotty results, with one report saying 7 percent of U.S. passengers have availed themselves of in-flight Wi-Fi, which is available on only 16 percent of commercial airplanes.
From a Computerworld story on our site:
There are a number of reasons: With Wi-Fi cropping up for free in many airports and public locations, passengers don't want to fork over as much as $10 for a flight of a few hours. Passengers also may not know when Wi-Fi is available on a flight since the airlines provide the wireless service on only a small percentage of their planes.
"The 7% [of in-flight Wi-Fi users] isn't too bad," said Amy Cravens, an analyst at In-Stat, since 7% in 2011 is an increase from 4% in 2010. "However, the service isn't profitable at these levels, so everyone is hoping it improves."
It will, of course.
But it's not as though the technology has just appeared. (The photo above was taken to illustrate an announcement of in-flight Internet service by Singapore Airlines ... in 2003.)
And there's no doubt some people actually welcome a couple of hours of being disconnected.
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