After an incredibly successful promotion last week, in which all Delta customers received complimentary Wi-Fi courtesy of eBay, we reached a key milestone this week as Delta and Aircell technicians installed Gogo Inflight Internet on the 300th Delta aircraft. As readers of this blog know, Delta has more Wi-Fi-equipped aircraft than any other airline on the planet and the latest 737-800 installation was an important moment in the development of this program. Through the remainder of 2009, we’ll install Wi-Fi on roughly 40 additional aircraft. We expect to finish the pre-merger Delta domestic fleet in the coming weeks and ramp up work on the pre-merger Northwest fleet in early January. It’s hard to imagine that just one year ago, we operated four MD88s on the La Guardia Shuttle routes. How things have changed!
Over the course of the next several months, we’ll be making several upgrades to Gogo that will make the onboard experience even better. The first enhancement happened Wednesday when Aircell activated a brand new cell tower, just northeast of Atlanta, in Westminster, SC. As traffic volumes have increased, so has the network’s ability to accommodate all you busy Web surfers on Delta aircraft. Aircell will also be adding new towers in Arizona, Wyoming and Maryland by the end of January. Beyond adding cell towers, existing cell sites have been split into smaller sectors as well. When we first launched with four MD88s, each cell site had three sectors. Today, half of the 93 towers have been upgraded to six sector cell sites, which basically doubles the capacity of the network in that area.
Another area of development is with the inflight portal. Gogo 2.0 is about to launch, and users who are familiar with our portal will begin seeing changes as we migrate from 1.0 to 2.0 across the fleet. We’ve enhanced usability, improved transaction times and given the portal a facelift! In fact, we’ll begin rolling it out next week in a beta phase. If you see the new portal and have feedback, don’t hesitate to drop us a line at entertainment@delta.com.
If you’re one of our frequent flyers, check out our 30-day pass. It’s available for $24.95 for a limited time. I actually bought a pass a couple weeks ago (yes, I pay for Wi-Fi) and it’s a great deal if you’re taking more than two flights in the next 30 days.
Fleet Deets: Which aircraft have Wi-Fi?
MD88
All (117)
MD90
All (16)
757-200 (103)
All pre-merger Delta EXCEPT 612, 616, 658, 660, 6801-6804, 6806-6812, 6814-6817, 6903
757-300 (1) Awaiting STC
5801
767-300 (5)
125-127, 129 and 138
737-700 STC Approved-Awaiting Reactivation
3601
737-800 (55)
3701-3705, 3707-3721, 3723-3745, 3747-3750, 3753-3756, 3762, 3767-3768, 3771
A319 (1) Awaiting STC
3122
A320 (1) Awaiting STC
3209
Chris B.
Sr. Product Manager
In-Flight Entertainment
(Thanks to Aircell’s Dave B., who provided details about the new towers and sectorization)
P.S. Check out this really interesting post from the folks at Gadling…they scored a behind the scenes tour of Aircell HQ.
