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Southwest Airlines Community

Welcome to the World Wide Web...Inflight

angela
Adventurer C

Today marks a historic day for Southwest and our Customers. After many months of evaluation and development, Southwest is the first airline to test aircraft-to-satellite Wi-Fi technology!
 
As you have probably heard, Southwest chose California-based Row 44 to evaluate this ground-breaking technology on four aircraft. Today, that test is becoming a reality and the first Southwest Airlines Customers will have a chance to experience being connected at 39,000 feet.

I had the opportunity to get a sneak peak  during private inflight testing  a couple weeks ago and the speed and quality of the solution was everything I hoped it would be and more. Anything you can do at home or from a coffee shop hotspot, you can do with this .
 
In addition, we are proud to announce a partnership with Yahoo! today to deliver a customized inflight homepage that includes a one-of-a-kind flight tracker, as well as daily programming of local news and information.  The new flight tracker will allow passengers to follow the plane’s flight path, and view “fly-over” points of interest along the route, with images from Flickr. 
 
If you are lucky enough to be on one of our Wi-Fi planes over the next few weeks, we'd love to hear about your experience! Look for the "Wi-Fi Hotspot" stickers as you board!
 
To view more information about today's big news, click here.

4 Comments
Anonymous4063
Explorer A
How do you know which planes have it and does Blackberry work with it? Also, is there a fee to use it?
David_Moreno
Explorer C
How is this different from American using Gogo In-flight?
Phil_J_Scott
Explorer C
Having Wi Fi available sounds great but even if approved, please don't go toward alowing cell phone conversations while in the air! LOUD conversations are already a problem on many flights so I can't imagine how maddening it would be if cell phone use was allowed. Thanks
mhankammer
Explorer C
I was so excited this morning when I found out I would be on one of the test aircraft! I'm on my way to San Diego, and we've been passing around iPhones and laptops the whole flight. Like Angela said, the speed of the connection is great, and you can do anything up here that you could online on the ground. We've watched "The Office," read some news, and of course e-mailed all our friends to brag about what we're doing. In fact, one of my Co-Workers just refinanced her house on the network. This is so fun and making the long trip fly by!