American Airlines Launches In-Flight WiFi Tracker
Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: American, Airlines, Wifi, Flight, Search | Themes: The Internet, Software
American Airlines has released a handy tool aimed at helping passengers who are looking for an in-flight WiFi-equipped flight.
AA today announced the launch of a special widget that will help users find out if their flight has WiFi. Additionally, customers who have yet to book a flight can enter in the airport from where they will be departing, and the widget will list all WiFi-equipped flights departing from the selected airport. Data is available for a 24 hour period.
"We are pleased to have the Wi-Fi Widget tool available for our customers," said Doug Backelin, American's manager of inflight communications and technology. "We realize how important inflight connectivity is to travelers and believe the new widget will make identifying Wi-Fi equipped aircraft easy."
Check out the tool by clicking here or visiting www.aawifiwidget.com.
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more money to make and how much does the widget cost?
more money to make and how much does the widget cost?
It's free to use if that's what you're asking? As far as how much AA spent on it, I have no clue.
The tool is not a sniffer. It's an availability widget. Title is very missleading.
Can we rename this article?!?! "American Airlines Releases Wi-Fi Widget" - they certainly have not released a wi-fi sniffing tool.
Nice to know we can track in-flight GPS coordinates should the pilots fly right past the airport.
American Airlines is too much win. They make other Airlines look bad. In San Diego, they have their own terminal.
They could just add an option to filter flights as you book them based on wifi access...
I'm not trying to be sarcastic, but I suffered without the internet when I flew to Europe. What has the world come to lol.
You'll continue to suffer without the
What I was trying to say was, before I somehow posted my last post, was that insider3 will not have an internet connection flying to Europe even today. The WiFi system which is installed on AA (and other carriers) is terrestrial based meaning it works off of cell towers. Obviously, this makes it impossible to get a signal when flying off the coast at some distance. Eventually, this will change with all carriers, but the options are way expensive right now.
Honis, flights are not actually assigned a specific tail number (specific aircraft) until about 8 hours prior to departure time. So, this means if you book the flight two weeks in advance, AA will not know what specific aircraft will be on your flight. Why this is important is that in the near term, only 150 of the MD80s in their fleet will have WiFi access. That means that you have about a 75% chance that your MD80 will have WiFi (hence the widget). The only other aircraft in AA's fleet that has WiFi is the 767-200, as of today. That will obviously change in the future. I would assume AA created the widget so that at flight time, you will know yes/no if your flight has WiFi on it. Honestly, I haven't checked it out because I don't fly on AA much.
Off topic.. Is wifi on the subway yet? =/
In response to av8, I know it's based off of cell towers. I was just making a general statement that I suffered just that 8 hours alone without the Internet. Meaning, I'm not surprised that AA has wi-fi since people like me can't do without the Internet for a couple of hours.
Gotcha...
Just making sure that people knew this was not a product like "Connection by Boeing" or whatever it was called before going out of business a few years ago. I used to be able to get on the internet over the Pacific flying between Tokyo and Chicago on JAL, which was awesome, using the SatCom solution. Pair the internet ability with my Slingbox and I had an awesome alternative to the inflight entertainment which, after doing the back amd forth to Tokyo serveral times a month, got pretty much boring.
I miss that ability now!