Gridlock News

The airlines don't really seem to completely get it.  They are still charging about the same prices for airline tickets, but they are raising prices on every other little thing they can, while their core business of flying people from A to Z falls apart.

Within the last 6 days my sister-in-law flying on an un-named airline that goes through Atlanta, uses a greek letter for their name that starts with D, and just rolled out a Wi-Fi service, managed to lose their pilot for her flight on both the departing flight and the return flight.

They lost the pilot!

The pilot would seem to be a central or core part of their business.  The plane for example, CANNOT fly without a pilot!  In both cases they could not find the pilot for the flight.  In the first instance, they found a pilot 5 hours later and the late flight finally took off.  In the second situation, they just gave up and sent everyone home or to a hotel for the night only to try their luck with the pilot lottery the next day.

So it surprises me a bit when that same airline rolls out a service that will charge $10 - $13 for Wi-Fi access while in flight.  (They don't offer electrical hook ups so you better have a great battery and a backup to get your money's worth).

It's the dawning of a new age, folks. In-flight Wi-Fi is slowly catching on with domestic airlines in the U.S. Now Delta is looking to capitalize on the popularity of in-flight Wi-Fi by outfitting its entire domestic fleet of aircrafts with Aircell's GoGo service.

GoGo will cost Delta flyers $9.95 on flights of three hours or less, and $12.95 for flights that are longer than three hours. Delta says it expects to begin to offer in-flight Wi-Fi early 2009.

American Airlines and Virgin America have been on-board for some time with in-flight Wi-Fi. Both have announced testing of Wi-Fi aboard its airliners for a limited number of flights. But Delta is making a big splash with an ambitious rollout of Wi-Fi to all its domestic fleet. This is big news coming from an airline that has been struggling lately.

PC World - Business Center: Delta Adds Wi-Fi to Entire Domestic Airline Fleet

I suppose with your Wi-Fi access while flying on Delta, you can post a job to hire a pilot if one doesn't show up or possibly bails out of the airliner with a parachute, or maybe you can buy a big inflatable thingy on sale  so that if you have to jump out yourself you'll have something soft to land on.  Maybe Amazon or Buy.com can promise super rapid shipping and setup for a life saving fee.  Apparently, that would be easier than just hiring enough pilots to show up for work on time.