Engadget just took JetBlue Airways’ debut flight of BetaBlue, their free inflight wifi service, and has posted an in-depth look of their experience. So far their story makes it seem like BetaBlue has a way to go before it becomes a truly useful service (unless you operate on Yahoo), but is a good first start. Airline Fanatic wrote about this flight when JetBlue announced BetaBlue last week.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that JetBlue is about to start testing their inflight wifi services with parterns Yahoo! and RIM. For now at least the service will be completely free, and offer access to customized Yahoo Mail and instant messaging services. People with wifi enabled Blackberries will also be able to access their corporate email and instant messages while inflight. Best of all this service is starting almost immediately – with the first flight on December 11th. The project, called BetaBlue, is only hooked up on one plane right now. The first flight to get this feature will be flight 641 from JFK to SFO next Tuesday, but will shift thereafter depending on the normal schedule of the aircraft. This is still a very limited test, so users will only be able to access the services mentioned above.
This test news puts JetBlue way ahead of other domestic carriers who are also in the market to install WiFi across their fleet. Virgin America announced earlier this year they intend to use wifi on their entire fleet (though that is considerably easier than equipping JetBlue’s fleet). JetBlue also said this testing will go on for months, so don’t get your hopes up too much for catching this first of a kind plane. Either way, sooner or later JetBlue will be forced to open up BetaBlue to the entire internet. The days of liveblogging my flights are upon us!