The guys at Gizmodo, along with their readers, have been running a standardized speed test on as many Wi-Fi-enabled flights as they can the past several weeks to figure out who provides the speediest connection. The verdict: Delta!
But before you go changing your flights, a few caveats. They only tested four airlines: American, Virgin America, Delta and AirTran, and all of those use GoGo as their provider. (Aircell's GoGo uses ground-based stations, while Row 44, the supplier for Alaskan Air and soon Southwest, uses satellites.) And Glenn Fleishman of WiFiNetNews weighs in to say that this may not be as definitive as it sounds, since speeds can vary widely based on how many people are using the service on any given flight. "Speedtest tries to suck all available bandwidth," he adds, "so it can only test how much is remaining or how much is provisioned to an individual user."
I tried GoGo for the first time on a Delta flight to San Francisco a couple of weeks ago and while I had no issues with browsing speed, the sign-up was a nightmare, burning half my battery before I had a steady connection. The help chat folks were great, but we kept getting cut off while trying to troubleshoot. Not sure I'd go through that again for $10-$12 (the price inexplicably changed while I was trying to sign up.) Here's a great chart from Jaunted.com of the various Wi-Fi options and costs.
What's your in-flight Wi-Fi experience been like, both in terms of speed and service?
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