Here’s my obligatory first post from a 747-400 cruising at 10,000 meters above Europe. I’m on Lufthansa enroute to Dubai for business.
If airline choices of equipment are a proxy for a location’s desireability, then San Francisco had better look to its laurels. The first leg of my trip, SFO to Frankfurt, was on a slightly tatty Lufthansa jumbo jet. I had heard about Lufthansa sticking with Boeing Connexion when most other airlines were abandoning it. And I was looking forward to trying out the service.
But from the self-proclaimed epicenter of the technology world there was no FlyNet. And in the Lufthansa lounge in Frankfurt, the Vodafone WiFi charges were so ridiculous that I checked my email with my BlackBerry instead of powering up my laptop. Lo and behold, however, the Frankfurt-Dubai flight is on what seems a nearly new 747 with, ta da, FlyNet. It’s wonderful (particularly since Lufthansa has a decidedly below-standard range of movies to watch). Every plane should have this.
If I had to prioritize where I put FlyNet, I would probably first put it on planes where people were awake, and second on planes where people were asleep, which fits with your experience (although of course when your tatty jumbo flew to SF it presumably didn’t have FlyNet then either). And then of course I’d put it on new planes before old ones.
But hasn’t Boeing announced that it’s abandoning Connexion? How can Lufthansa keep it if the provider pulls the plug?
If you follow that FlyNet link I provided above, Lufthansa says Boeing has guaranteed them support until the end of the year, which isn’t much longer. They seem to believe that an alternative supplier will step forward. I wonder if that will be at an affordable cost for Lufthansa and its passengers.