Continental has announced that it is finally getting into the wifi game by installing wifi on its 757-300 fleet. That makes them the last major to announce wifi plans, and I think this move is interesting for a few reasons.

We all know that Delta and American are well into their wifi rollouts. United is doing a limited test on its p.s. fleet which flies between JFK and LA and San Francisco. And even US Airways has announced wifi plans for its A321 fleet. So what took Continental so long?

Remember, Continental opted for the LiveTV product on much of its fleet, including the 757-300. I was wondering if they were holding out for a LiveTV broadband option, but clearly that’s not the case. I assume this means they’re unsatisfied with LiveTV’s narrowband product (which offers email and a couple websites but that’s it) now that they have broadband coming into place. LiveTV must be watching closely.

It’s also interesting to me that they’ve chosen the 757-300 for wifi. It’s the 737s that tend to do most of the long haul domestic flying, so I would have thought that would have been a better fleet for this. Maybe the fact that this is a smaller fleet makes this a better test fleet in their eyes.

This to me also signals that the 737 will remain the airplane of choice for Hawai’i. There is no GoGo internet service over the water, so if they were planning on having these planes fly to Hawai’i, they probably wouldn’t bother installing this.

I always thought of the 757-300 as a Florida airplane. It can hold so many people that it actually can squeak out a living by carrying snowbirds down to the swamp for the winter, even on those cheap fares. But those aren’t the demographic that Continental would want to target with its wifi product. It’s the business travelers that benefit the most. So I find myself wondering what Continental is planning to do with this fleet.

Do they have something up their sleeve?

Everyone remember Lumexis? They’re the guys that showed me their new very light and kind of awesome inflight entertainment system that US Airways tested awhile back. Earlier this week, Lumexis announced that they had signed up their first customer, and I’ve been trying to figure out who it is ever since. Let’s see if you guys have any ideas. Here’s what we know.

• That announcement said that they had “been awarded a large order for its FTTS™ (Fiber To The Screen™) Audio-Video-On-Demand, In-Flight Entertainment Systems for installation on the new customer’s fleet of 737-family aircraft.”
• This new customer will have entertainment but will also use the system to “support in-seat purchases by travelers of an array of products and services.”

With this information, Runway Girl started a conversation trying to figure out who it might be. I’ve uncovered an additional piece of info that dramatically narrows the field.

I asked Lumexis for further detail, and while they wouldn’t tell me much, they did say that “it is a full fleet installation.” Aha! So it can’t be an airline with just a large 737 fleet. It has to be an airline with a large fleet made up only of 737s. There are four possible suspects that come to mind.

• Southwest
• Alaska
• Ryanair
• Gol

Of these three, I would say Southwest is least likely. They don’t offer an “array” of products and services to sell onboard, so that seems suspect unless it’s part of a massive change for them. Gol is possible, I suppose, but I don’t have a feeling either way. Alaska and Ryanair, however, both would have good reason.

We know that Alaska likes to offer a good product onboard, and they aren’t shy about charging fees for things. We also know that they’ve been fighting Virgin America really hard, and this would help them get toward product parity. They also have a growing long haul network and a significant Hawai’i presence that can’t use live television because it’s outside of the service area. This would seem like a perfect solution.

On the other hand, nobody knows how to sell like Ryanair. If this system could somehow let them increase their onboard sales, it might be a rock star for them. They can, of course, charge for the entertainment itself, though when they tried to use portable units for sale before, it flopped and they removed them quickly.

Who else has a large 737-only fleet that could be in the running? I eliminated WestJet already since they have LiveTV. What am I missing? Anyone else?

What say you?

It’s no surprise that when you make something completely free, people use it a lot more often than if you make them pay. Duh. And that’s why it’s not surprising to see airlines scrambling to find a way to offer wireless internet for free. Just in the last few days, we’ve seen three promotions that will let anyone log on from 30,000 feet without paying a dime.

First up was Virgin America. They teamed up with Google to offer the most robust opportunity so far. Wireless connectivity will be free for anyone traveling between November 10 and January 15. Just turn on your computer and follow the instructions.

Meanwhile, American has joined with Lexus to offer free wireless as well . . . but only for a week. Lexus is promoting a new line of cars with free wifi from now through November 7. Remember, American has wifi on a lot more aircraft than Virgin America, so this is still a sizable promotion. It’s just a lot shorter. And on this one, it’s not automatically free. You have to enter code 2010LEXUSLS.

The last one I’ve seen is from AirTran. They are being a little more conservative still. The deal on AirTran is that if you pay for wifi on one flight, you’ll get a second one free. That’s probably the least attractive of the three opportunities here, but the end goal is the same.

Airlines are trying to stimulate wifi use, and really they should. Remember, once an airline hits on a great idea, the others will jump in and copy. So those airlines that have wifi now will have a limited opportunity to showcase their differentation. Eventually, everyone will have this.

Getting people to try onboard wifi is something that the airlines hope can attract people to their airline. If they’re going to do it, now is the time.

What exactly would you think when you saw a press release entitled, “Get Connected with Complimentary Wi-Fi from US Airways“?

Yeah, that’s what I thought. Sounds like US Airways is putting wireless internet onboard and offering it for free, right? Wow, the airline has really tried to jump the competition with this one. Er, um, wait a second. Maybe we should actually read the release.

US Airways is actually offering complimentary wireless internet in its airport clubs. That’s it. Oh. Well it’s a good benefit for sure, but I was somehow expecting more from that title. Now that Delta is working on beefing up the inflight entertainment options on Northwest, US Airways is sitting firmly in the rear of the industry when it comes to onboard customer offerings.

The airline still has not announced a single onboard wifi project. I believe that puts them in the same category as Allegiant, Spirit, Midwest, and the regional carriers. Every other US-based airline has announced at least a wifi test. So, just to make sure one more time that you’re not confused by the release, here is what US Airways is offering:

Things aren’t much different when it comes to other inflight entertainment options either. Remember that test with the Lumexis in-seat video system on a single aircraft? Well it performed flawlessly, but the airline has been silent on future plans. President Scott Kirby has made it clear that the airline won’t be installing inflight entertainment until it can obtain adequate financing. I guess that hasn’t become available yet.

This isn’t great news for Lumexis, but I wouldn’t worry about them. After 275 flights and 1,000 hours in operation on that one airplane, there wasn’t a single system failure. According to CEO Doug Cline, “We have never delayed a single flight and have never even required a system reboot.” Pretty impressive stuff, so even if US Airways doesn’t move forward, they very likely still have a bright future ahead with other airlines.

It will be interesting to see if US Airways sees any customers defect because of the airline’s lack of competitiveness in onboard offerings. If they do, they might need to make some quick adjustments. If they don’t, well, they might just end up looking like the smartest airline around. (My guess is that while it might look like the latter for a little while, eventually it will be the former.)

[Original photos via Flickr from runJMrun and marcoPapale.com]

Shortly after I published my trip report including the non-functioning televisions on JetBlue, I received an email from LiveTV’s CEO Nate Quigley about my flight. He offered to walk me through what happened and try to explain why my flight had problems. It ended up being a fascinating discussion, and I’m really glad he reached out.

At left, you’ll see the map showing the signal performance on my flight. Green means the signal was good and red means it wasn’t. As you can see, it was not good. Thought you see a couple of green specks on the way down, the individual channel reports show that the channels still weren’t coming through until the end. In that much more detailed report, from boarding until we started taxiing at SFO, the signal was good on many but not all channels. Once we started taxiing, it was good only on a few channels. Within 5 minutes of departure, the signal had been lost entirely. It stayed that way until 14 minutes prior to landing when the signal came back.

So what happened? Apparently, we’re on the wild frontier out here on the West Coast, and these flights go over the toughest areas to pick up DirecTV signals in the continental US. Take a look at this map at right showing the DirecTV coverage area.

The antennas they use are actually slightly smaller than the 18″ dish, so the footprint is a bit smaller as well. As you can see, most of the US is covered very well, but just off San Francisco, the coverage ends. Now Nate showed me plenty of other flights over the same routes that received a much better signal. He estimated that on 8 out of 10 flights off the coast, you’ll get a great experience, but you might run into some trouble on the rest. My flight was an anomaly in that it was bad for much longer than even would be expected on those 2 out of 10 flights that might see some trouble. But why?

Did the clouds have anything to do with it? Nope. Nate explained that the only thing that interferes with the signal is standing moisture on the radome. That’s why you sometimes get obscured signals on the ground in heavy rain or some snow. But once you get moving, that moisture flies off and it’s not a problem anymore. We had the opposite problem on my flight where the signal was better when we were standing still, so that couldn’t have been the problem.

Was it a bad antenna? It doesn’t look that way. All the other flights on that aircraft over the three day period surrounding mine were trouble-free. It’s possible that this antenna is a little weaker than others, so it might have been more likely to run into problems flying at the edge of the coverage zone than others, but that’s also not clear. It is, however, something they will keep an eye on. They are constantly monitoring airplanes to see if there are some problematic ones out there, and they’ll fix them if necessary.

So was it really just a problem of being on the edge of the coverage area? Quite possibly. Or there could have been a sunspot or some other random occurrence that may just have screwed things up for flights on the edge of the area. It’s amazing the volume of data these guys have to make sure that they can address these types of problems, though that doesn’t always mean they can pinpoint the exact reason.

At least now we know that weather isn’t an issue. It’s more than likely just a problem of flying around the edge of the coverage area. So those of you flying between San Francisco or Oakland and Long Beach might want to be prepared. While the northbound flights tend to go more inland, the southbound ones head out of the water, and that means they might be run into trouble with satellite reception from time to time. (San Jose flights nearly always stay inland.)

I have to say thanks again to Nate and the LiveTV crew for putting together this incredibly comprehensive report for me. A minute-by-minute report on the signal strength on each channel is just an impressive amount of data. And their willingness to reach out and be open about this is really refreshing.