Coming Soon-ish: Virgin's Own In-Flight WiFi

June 24, 2008

This morning, news broke that American Airlines is rolling out its new in-flight WiFi tomorrow. As we posted our story, we heard from Jaunted pal Charles Ogilvie. While applauding American's efforts, he wanted to assure us that Virgin America isn't falling behind on the airborne wireless front:

We're taking our time to get it right. We're not just throwing this on our planes like in the lobby of some hotel.

Charles tells us that Virgin should have at least some in-flight WiFi by this fall; the whole fleet will have it by early 2009.

As is the case on AA--but not on JetBlue--you'll be able to surf the whole web from your laptop, and, notably, the VA product will also let you SMS from the seat-back entertainment console. Charles says that once the system is in place--and Paris Hilton helps christen it on the premiere WiFi flight--the carrier will continue to develop its internet offerings. So how long till we're playing video games against our buddies on different Virgin flights?