The fact that a few United Airlines Airbus A319 aircraft have the Panasonic in-flight internet kit installed is not much of a secret. The carrier has been reasonably open about the fact that the type is getting the gear installed these days. But there haven’t been any more details released. No word on exactly when the carrier expects to formally launch the service. No word on pricing. Basically no word.
A member on FlyerTalk has indicated that a flight today indicated that they were posting on the site while in-flight on one of the A319s. Based on the time of the post and the route listed it would appear that the service actually is live on ship 4002 a/k/a N802UA. There were apparently two advertised prices for the quick 3 hour flight from Houston to Washington, DC, $6.99 or $9.99 with different speeds offered as well, though not much on details there either.
The United website doesn’t indicate that this frame has in-flight connectivity yet. And I haven’t found the STC approval in the FAA database yet. But at least one person was able to use it. That’s a great step forward.
UPDATE: FlightAware shows the aircraft on the ground in O’Hare for 20 days at the end of November. That seems like when the install happened.
Related Posts:
- Delta, Gogo up the ante for in-flight entertainment
- Upgrades coming to United’s p.s. in-flight internet
- United p.s. retrofit date targets sighted
- A step closer to more bandwidth in the skies
- Fleet-wide wifi coming to United
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I was on this aircraft from SNA to DEN Thursday 12/6. The crew mentioned that it was one of the first flights with the new wifi service although the were clueless in use of the system. My guess is no training was giving on the operations of the service as it didn’t work during the flight. Turns out the power switches to the unit were not turned on – when the switches are lit, the system is off rather than on contrary to all their other instrumentation. They figured it out just as we started our descent into DEN.
I was the person using it last night (well, probably not the only person, but the one who reported it…)–there was no mention of the service being available.