On 2 of the 3 flights I took during my vacation last week, the airplanes I was on had been updated to have WiFi on board. The 2 flights that had it were Delta. Their newly soon-to-be-merged partner, Northwest, didn’t yet have WiFi on their aircraft, despite the fact that the Northwest plane was significantly newer than the two Delta planes I flew.
The in-flight WiFi service works through GoGo and has a fee assoicated with it that doesn’t include accessing some content on delta.com. It appeared to be a pretty slick system with reaonsabily fast speed. Upon returning from vacation, I decided to look into a bit more only to learn that Delta has a blog which details the planes that have had this system added to them. I have to admit: I was impressed at the fact that they were doing WiFi on their planes AND that they had a blog to talk about it. Nicely done!
As a side-note, it also impressed me that Delta staff seemed to be consistently striving to offer great customer service. From the woman at the gate who worked hard to get our family better seats to the staff on-board who were always pleasant and curteous (even ASKING me nicely to keep my foot out of the isle when it was COMPLETELY my fault for leaving it there while they were serving drinks … something I never do but was so into the movie I was watching I wasn’t paying attention). Even something as small as handing you a basket of snacks and offering to let you take as many as you’d like is a big deal — especially in this day of being charged for everything.
Now for the funny part… on the 2nd (Delta) flight, they announced that there was a problem that left them with no potable water, so they (apparently – I didn’t check) placed large bottles in the restrooms for people to use when washing hands on the short flight. They did, however, have WiFi working properly – which a few people around me joked about saying that they’d rather have “WiFi vs. Water” anyway. Priorities.
What people here are saying…