Continental Airlines Looks To LiveTV For InFlight Email and IM
Continental Airlines, the 5th largest in the U.S., announced recently a partnership with LiveTV to offer inflight email and IM capabilities to passengers by January 2009. Set to be added to its fleet of Boeing 737 aircraft, the service will be free to all passengers and available on laptops as well as WiFi-enabled smartphones. They will also be offering 36 channels from DirectTV’s satellite TV lineup, free for everyone but Economy class, who pays $6 for the privilege.
According to the press release, the IM seems to be limited to Blackberry messenger and Yahoo! messenger protocols, though I’m not quite sure how or why. In any case, I’m all for internet connectivity on airlines, just not voice.
I love the idea of having access to the internet while in flight, but like everyone else I’m terrified of sitting next to that one person who will yap about their cats rash for hours. Seems like they just need to limit people to talk while in a special area near the galley. Otherwise maybe they should be tazered.
Posted by Jeb on January 31st, 2008 at 12:40 am.