If you need to have an emergency Skype meeting with your team, you can stop by a Starbucks, hang out on a bus, or find a corner café. You can even tether your laptop to your smartphone to get instant Internet access in an emergency. Up until recently, however, if you happened to be flying, the meeting would just have to wait.
Several airlines have started to offer WiFi on domestic flights as of recently, however, including Delta and American Airlines. Still, less than a third of flights within the US actually have Internet access as of last week. So basically, if you want Internet while you’re eating your peanuts, you’ll have to choose very carefully.
Not to worry, however. There are several domestic flights you can take if you want internet access. And guess what? All top ten flights that have WiFi were either going to or leaving Atlanta. Even though only eight percent of people on planes actually use the available WiFi, over fifty percent said they plan on using WiFi in the future and some twenty percent said they find that WiFi is an important factor in choosing which flight they take.
If you want to all but guarantee that you’ll have WiFi in the air, fly from San Francisco, Boston, Atlanta, Tampa, Charlotte or Los Angeles. Virgin America is also the only airline thus far to fit all fifty of their planes with WiFi devices, though they do charge $10 per flight no matter how far someone flies. However, Virgin America also says that some 25% of their passengers have no problem paying for the WiFi, even if the flight is under two hours.