How to get the most out of in-flight Wi-Fi

Most Delta flights have A/C outlet in between the seats so no need for an adapter, just plug in your normal charger cable.

Is there a way to get a list of airlines with Wifi and price ?

I will be booking Christmas tickets soon....

I recently flew DEN-OMA for an evening flight on one of Southwest's WiFi-equipped planes (whole fleet will be sometime early next year, if I recall). I usually like to just look out the window when flying, as it's neat to see and helps me keep myself balanced during turns, but there is a lot less to see at night, so I paid the $4 or so and connected up my iPhone. It gives you ETA and altitude, and I believe a map too if you're on a laptop. Was able to email, tweet, and check Facebook perfectly well. I can see the valuie especially for longer flights.

If you have a Mac, you can set your Safari's User Agent to "iPhone" before you sign up for the WiFi, save a couple bucks, and then switch it back to normal once you've paid and you'll still be able to access the internet perfectly.

Good: In-flight Internet access.

Bad: In-flight voice access.

Pathetic: People who can't spent even a few hours apart without the need to be in constant electronic communication. It's bad enough having all the jackasses pop open their mobiles the moment a plane reaches the gate, thereby slowing down the process of gathering bags and getting the heck off the plane for everyone.

I tried in-airplane wifi for a recent flight from Atlanta to a northeastern US city on Delta. I didn't expect it to be usable, but much to my immense surprise, it was actually pretty good!

I used ssh to connect to my home server 3,000 miles away. Much to my immense surprise, according to traceroute, the latency was very low! Felt zippy. My connection was flaky for only a couple seconds during the entire flight.

Sadly, it was actually faster and a more pleasant experience ssh'ing at 37,000 feet in a metal tube at Mach 0.78 than when parked at a desk on the ground somewhere. I didn't do much web surfing so I don't know what graphics-intensive download speed was like.

Provider was AirCell -- via their GoGo WiFi service. Not all airplanes had it installed at the time but heard plan was to roll out fleetwide on more airlines and airplanes. Aside from Delta, United, American, AirTran, Air Canada, and Virgin America also uses GoGo.

I can't speak about flights out in the west or in the UK, but given the U.S. east coast population density, there's no shortage of cell towers and coverage. The wifi provider uses ground-based cellular tower connections to deliver the traffic.

I got a huge kick out of tracking my own flight in near-real time on flightaware.com, seeing the altitude, airspeed, heading, exact flight plan route, precip radar returns, etc.

The WiFi stuff works great with the iPhone, too. Airlines that uses GoGo has their route map for WiFi coverage shown at:

http://www.gogoinflight.com/jahia/Jahia/site/gogo/lang/en/participatingairlines

I recently used Delta's inflight wifi service on a flight back to Boise. I decided to stream some videos from Hulu, which worked surprisingly well for about the first 10 minutes. After 10 minutes however, the video stopped and I could hardly even browse the web. Any thoughts on why this happened? Do you think that they have a bandwidth cap, and that once you exceed it, your speed is throttled down?

So where in this article is Slim Battery Monitor mentioned? (Hint: you used the program's icon for the main story image)

Ah, remember the days when people got arrested for refusing to turn off their iPhones during flight because the plane would crash. "Oh, no, wait. I'm sorry sir, we've figured out a way to monetize your use now. Feel free. Go right ahead. Leave that phone on. Oh, but don't use external storage with your laptop because that in fact will crash the plane and release a plague upon the earth like never before seen."

Airlines - the only service industry where the customer is always wrong and you've got a US Marshal at your back, covering for your BS.

I can't wait - I sure hope you're sitting next to me on my next flight to Phoenix.

I bet your seatmate was disappointed when you had to "take a break". What a shame for you that you couldn't talk through the whole flight!!!