JetBlue to go Wireless

Wifi is pretty scarce in the skies right now.


There are only seven airlines that offer wifi in the U.S., and even then, it's not available on every flight.

We found an easy way to check if your flight offers wifi with a website called HasWifi. The site is simple to use. Just select your airline and flight number and HasWifi will let you know if wifi is available.

You can also help improve the site's results by voting yes or no if you had wifi on that particular flight. Eventually, an API will be open to developers, so expect to see smartphone apps soon.

We’ve been hot on the trail of JetBlue’s plans for fleetwide WiFi access in the coming years, and it looks like tray table connectivity has just gotten a step closer to actually happening.

Just don’t get too excited if you have a trip booked for later in 2011, as in-flight WiFi on JetBlue won’t be happening until 2012 at the earliest.

JetBlue has been working with ViaSat on all the satellite technology to get the newfangled connectivity options off the ground.

Now the airline has reached an agreement to use ViaSat-1, which is the world’s highest capacity Ka-band satellite. Hmm—sounds speedy. Seriously though, it should be rapid fast for passengers—although they’re not giving specifics—as well as having increased bandwidth for whenever passengers hit YouTube all at once.

The price tag for the technology is going to cost at least $30 million, as JetBlue is planning to utilize the new technology on both its Airbus A320 and Embraer E190 jets.

One of the next steps is certification through the Federal Aviation Administration to ensure that things work just as well up in the air as they do on paper. After that we’re thinking that it’s going to be a lot of late nights for those JetBlue employees working in the maintenance hangars.

Again, 2012 seems to be roundabout date you can expect to test things out for yourself, but we don’t know exactly which month—obviously we’re hoping for January. Once JetBlue, LiveTV, and ViaSat get all the kinks worked out with the new service, their attention will move over to Continental Airlines, as they’ll also be scoring some satellite technology within the next couple of years.

This post originally appeared in Jaunted