Blogging From The Air With Virgin America

This report is filed from the JFK to SFO flight on Virgin America’s WiFi enabled jet. We thought we’d try out “air-fi” to see how it worked. First impressions are great – there’s simple upload and download of email, easy access to the web. As you do use it you get to notice some of issues from the slower connections which you’d probably expect – YouTube videos buffer for a long while, for example. There’s also some trickery going on behind the scenes to manage data volume – I’m writing this from PSFK’s web-based publishing platform not from my desk-top as I usually do. The plane seems to be stopping me from uploading posts from desktop publishing software Ecto and I wonder if over the course of my $12.95 WiFi experience I’ll start to notice other aspects that hinder my work.

Nevertheless – power outlets and decent Wifi is a big plus to a journey across the country. I was able to do all my RSS morning scan at the same time I normally do – which sets up my day fine and doesn’t mean that when I land I won’t feel like the constant need to catch up – and I can just get on with my day.

Virgin America