ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON JUNE 30, 2009 (on a blog hosting site that's not very friendly about exporting their data)
Most times I'm asleep before takeoff. The routine, honed after 20+ years of heavy traveling and more than two million miles in the air, is more a result of muscle memory than thought. Backpack stored in overhead - check. Newspaper and reading materials folder in seat-back pocket - check. Earbuds firmly inserted to block noise and memorized announcements - check. Turn off phone - check. Wake-up when drink cart rolls down the aisle - check. Log into WiFi to get some work done - check - WAIT - what? WiFi? Up here? Yup.
After years of isolation at 35,000' and the ability to effectively block work-related communications thanks to a lack of Internet connectivity the wall has come down - or gone way, way up, depending on your point of view. It took years before the net's reach extended outwards from the home or office but now that's pretty much routine - wireless cards, hot spots, tethering a mobile to your laptop, etc., all keep us connected when we're on the horizontal. But now the reach has gone vertical. Just last week I had sky-high WiFi. And loved it.
Most of my flying has been spread across the three major airlines thanks to relocations that took me to Dallas (American), Chicago (United), Atlanta (Delta) and L.A. (take your pick). I'd never flown Virgin America before but had tried Virgin Atlantic for a couple of hops across the pond to London and liked it so I figured it would be worth a try.
Now, trust me on this one - I don't have positive feelings about airlines very often. I've experienced pretty much every travel nightmare you can imagine and if I never saw another boarding pass as long as I lived that would be just peachy with me. That said, Virgin America rocks. On top of nice planes, mood lighting, an amazing in-flight entertainment system and a food ordering process that I wish my local restaurants offered, there's WiFi. For $12 you get a whole flight's worth of connectivity. Virgin even had a special offer running on my return flight through GoGo (the official provider to Virgin) of free WiFi for any flight on Virgin America that day.
As you can imagine the freebie caught a lot of attention so there's was a lag getting logged in on the return flight, but on the outbound it took less time than watching the mind-numbing safety announcement. Once logged in, I could hardly tell the difference between my laptop's speed on the plane and when in my home office - and I've got a 15MPS cable modem there. Email, browsing, YouTube, Skype (IM only, no audio chat – thankfully) were smooth, glitch-free and transparent – no settings changes required… just open the laptop, login and go.
There's a special setup for PDAs, too, so I checked it out with my iPhone and saw others using Blackberrys and various sundry handheld devices. I used Skype from my phone, Pandora, picked up email, browsed some web sites even checked our flight arrival status - all without changing a thing other than logging in. Way cool stuff.
Some may bemoan the fact that sky-high-WiFi eliminates the last sanctuary. Not me. As long as audio isn't allowed I can pick up email and work comfortably and quietly at my discretion. Plus I know that others won't be yakking in the adjacent seat because audio isn't enabled yet on Skype or other chatting applications (that's likely to change, though, as people develop workarounds). Lots of people seemed to be heads-down into their work and really enjoying the solitude.
Others may react differently - especially if bosses and secretaries insist on the same instant response to email that they've grown to expect when you're terrestrially-bound. My solution is simple: don't let them get accustomed to immediate responses in the first place (but that's fodder for another post). It's nice to have the choice, though.
