Wi-Fi in the Sky
A PandoDaily journalist was the first to notice that Gogo’s standard fare of $15 for the day (or $12.70 if you buy ahead of time) wasn’t available on his Virgin America flight from San Francisco to New York, and instead cost $10 per hour.
I’ve gotten used to flying on Virgin America every time I travel from New York to visit my family in California, because the airfare is decent, and because of the access to Wi-Fi (I had a boss once who told me I could fly to Los Angeles for a short weekend if I promised to work on the plane and send him a draft of something I was working on). For some reason, $13 for Internet access seems like a reasonable price to charge for Internet access while you’re in the sky, but $10 an hour sounds like some sort of con, and I’m glad to hear other competitors are getting into the market to help drive prices down. Or I can just skip the work and read a book.
My favourite part of frequently travelling for work in a large country that has little to no WiFi in planes is being out of contact from work for hours on end without having to explain why. That or being able to expense pizza.
I agree – the lack of wi-fi on planes is a feature, not a bug. It’s the one place left in the world where you can recline your seat, read whatever you want or watch shitty movies, and drink gin without having to respond to anyone outside your space.
Yes, I cherish my internet-free sky time.