As the dire finances of the airline industry force carriers to find ways of charging for what once were free services, in-flight WiFi offers an appealing alternative: charge for something new that didn't have a precedent of being free. After a number of US carriers announced plans to offer the service on specific aircraft models, Delta Airlines has decided it wasn't interested in these half-measures. By next year, it plans to have every aircraft in its domestic fleet fitted with hardware to allow in-flight WiFi access.

As with the other airlines, Delta will be using the Gogo service provided by Aircell, which transmits a given plane's traffic through a dedicated cellular network on the ground (we've described this in a bit more detail in the past). The connection appears to support access to a variety of Internet protocols—Delta mentions web, e-mail, IM, and VPN—as well as SMS messages.

The service will be offered at flat rates: $9.95 for flights under three hours, $12.95 for anything over that. (There was no mention of what would happen if a shorter flight stretches out past the three-hour limit while stuck in a holding pattern.) As Aircell notes in its product literature, computer users are accustomed to having to pay for access to public hotspots (generally including those at airports), opening their wallets for several hours of access is unlikely to seem as aggravating as doing so for a blanket and pillow.

Although Aircell claims that its systems can be installed during an overnight layover, Delta expects the rollout to take nearly a year. MD-88 and MD-90 aircraft, which are the most common in its domestic fleet, will get the upgrade first, followed by various forms of Boeing jets. In all, the 330+ plane fleet is expected to be fully outfitted by next summer—perhaps sooner if, like other airlines, Delta takes planes out of service through cutbacks. The first planes to offer the service should be in operation by the autumn.

As I have to spend most of my day connected anyway, I've generally used flights to sort through back work and emails without the threat of being distracted by new work flooding in, or as an opportunity to catch up on reading some dead-tree material. As such, I'm somewhat ambivalent about the chance to have airborne WiFi. Still, at least I can count on the combination of a 6'2" frame, a 17" laptop, and a miniscule gap between me and the reclining passenger in front of me to ensure that my laptop is unusable.