January 14 - 1:00pm EST   United Airlines will bring in-flight Internet access to a portion of its planes later this year, according to an announcement. The company has specifically chosen AirCell's gogo service, which has already been attached to companies like Delta, American Airlines and Virgin America. Passengers will be able to connect via any Wi-Fi device, and access conventional Internet functions such as e-mail and web browsing, or more elaborate ones like VPN tunneling. [full story]

August 20 - 9:30am EDT   American Airlines today started offering Gogo, its Aircell-run service for in-flight Internet access. The feature pipes a cellular Internet connection from the ground to a router onboard each plane, which in turn shares its access to all passengers through Wi-Fi. The service is platform-agnostic and provides access to both notebooks as well as handhelds, including explicit support for iPhones as well as certain BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices equipped with the short-range wireless format. [full story]

August 5 - 4:05pm EDT   Delta Air Lines announced on Tuesday it will offer broadband Wi-Fi access on all domestic flights in 2009, equipping over 330 airplanes with the ability to access the Aircell-created Gogo network. The service will allow data transfer speeds of more than 12Mbps, and will be offered in both first and economy classes. It will give Delta the distinction of being the first and only US airline to offer in-flight Wi-Fi on all domestic flights. [full story]

August 1 - 12:00pm EDT   The Congressional Transportation and Infrastructure committee voted yesterday to introduce a bill to the House of Representatives that will potentially outlaw nearly all use of active cellphones on any commercial aircraft. Nicknamed the Hang Up Act, the measure would ban placing or receiving voice calls for all but the crew as well as for any air marshals aboard a given flight. Democrat Peter DeFazio, who proposed the bill, describes the possibility of allowing voice calls an "annoyance" and that an attempt to profit from these calls to make up for a poor economy would be ill-advised. [full story]

July 16 - 4:25pm EDT   Aircell, which will offer Wi-Fi access on airplanes while in flight via its Gogo service, today announced it would base its second generation of the service on the 4G Long Term Evolution data network. When the service goes live later on this year, it will use CDMA EVDO Rev A for data transfer during flights, topping out at more than 12 Mbps. By the end of 2009, Aircell plans to up that number to 22.7 Mbps with advances in its current technology. When the company incorporates the 4G LTE network in 2011, throughput speeds will jump to 300 Mbps, Aircell promises. [full story]

June 24 - 12:45pm EDT   American Airlines will begin testing in-flight Wi-Fi technology on June 25th, a report claims. The technology is expected to debut on a round-trip flight between New York City's JFK and Los Angeles' LAX, and should it be successful, it could be quickly activated on number of other AA aircraft. Some 15 Boeing 767-200 planes are said to already have Wi-Fi installed, it just being a matter of activating the routers at will. [full story]

March 11 - 4:05pm EDT   The first full in-flight Internet access since the end of Boeing's Connexion service is coming in the spring, according to a GigaOM report. Now titled gogo, the service developed by AirCell will allow browsing and other common Internet tasks over a modified version of a EVDO Revision A cellular connection (used by Sprint and Verizon) to supply a 3Mbps Internet link shared by the whole cabin through Wi-Fi. By compressing the data sent across the network, each user gets a connection closer to 2Mbps, gogo claims. [full story]

December 7 - 1:05pm EST   American Airlines may be the next company to adopt in-flight Internet via Wi-Fi, an anonymous tip claims. According to the source, transcontinental 767-200s will be fitted with broadband and Wi-Fi in 2008, the responsible company being AirCell. Earlier this year, AirCell announced that it had acquired FCC frequencies which would allow it to resurrect Wi-Fi; the technology had by that point long vanished from US flights, as Boeing's Connexion service had suffered a financial collapse. [full story]

December 6 - 3:45pm EST   BlackBerry creator Research in Motion this afternoon announced a partnership with Yahoo to offer free Wi-Fi on JetBlue flights. The deal will provide custom Yahoo IM and mail services on both RIM's smartphones as well as on notebook PCs and will allow any device to use the service for general Internet access, including the BlackBerry's 'push' e-mail feature. Using the service will be free with a JetBlue ticket for a supporting flight; the first airplanes to deploy the short-range wireless in their cabins will run commercial flights from December 11th in trials with a full launch in several months if succesful, the airline says. [full story]