Alaska Airlines lofted an airplane equipped with Internet service last week, flying from Seattle to San Jose, on the first of about 100 flights they plan over 60 days to see how passengers react to an always-available network connection.

Fortunately, voice calls and video chats are banned, both in the terms of service, and through active technological efforts. For now.

The flying office will inspire fear in some, ecstasy in others. We’re not allowed to stop working when we’re out of the office already if we have any kind of clerical or professional job.

Those who fly for work are expected to make up for the lost productivity in air. You know the folks, if it’s not you, struggling to get something done on a laptop before landing.

 

Alaska isn’t the first to offer mile-high Wi-Fi, nor has it yet committed to rolling out the satellite-backed offering. American Airlines had the first planes in the air in September with Internet service from a company called Aircell, which owns an exclusive air-to-ground FCC license.

American was followed by Virgin America in November, which will equip its two dozen planes by mid-2009, and Delta Airlines in December, which is about 10 percent done with its 300-plus domestic wide-body fleet already. Virgin and Delta also chose Aircell.

Aircell’s approach works well over the continental United States. The company has built out a network of ground stations that use relatively conventional cellular data technology, with the exception that the company points its antennas upwards, and that it uses frequencies reserved for its purposes. (JetBlue’s in-flight entertainment division, LiveTV, won a similar license with less spectrum, and thus not very useful for general Internet access.)

Both kinds of aircraft Internet connections allow for a few megabits per second downstream (in this case, from the Internet to the plane) and hundreds of kilobits per seconds upstream (from the plane back out). That’s good for consumption and twittering, not for uploading photos.

Aircell’s partners charge $10 for flights 3 hours and shorter and $13 for longer flights.

Alaska hasn’t set a price yet, although with most of their flights on the shorter side, the word is the company will charge less than $10 most of the time. Subscriptions and other more esoteric pricing, including perhaps free or discounted service for the most frequent of flyers, is likely in a few months.

I flew Virgin’s launch party flight with Wi-Fi back in November, which used its production service, and was quite impressed, especially given that there were about 130 other people on board all going crazy downloading and uploading. (YouTube was a sponsor of the event, and two 30 Rock ensemble members were on board plus YouTube celebrities. It was a hoot.)

Alaska Airlines couldn’t tap into Aircell for many of its routes, which are over Canada or over water to Alaska, or pass over water and over Mexico when heading to south-of-the-border cities.

Its satellite partner, Row 44, has also signed up Southwest Airlines, the no-frills giant. Southwest has a few planes with Row 44’s service up in the air for testing right now.

An Alaska executive told me last week that his firm is fairly gung-ho, and is running a 60-day test just to be sure that passengers are interested and the service delivers. Southwest, with hundreds of planes itself, has been more circumspect about its future plans.

With Wi-Fi as you fly, can we ever stop working? It’s possible. Talking with some of the early users of the various services, I find that people timeshift work. If you’re in the air, you might peck at your laptop, read a book, or just be bored. With the Internet available, you might be able to shift work that you have to do when you land on board, and have few or no commitments on arrival.

I know that even as a freelancer, a cross-country trip typically involves spending a couple hours on arrival getting settled in, answering email, catching up on news, and so forth. For someone who is actively working on sales accounts, for instance, having real-time, secure access to a customer relationship management system might mean better productivity, and a better night’s sleep.

So what will a plane full of people all plugged in with no place to go do? Work, of course, but also Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and the rest—the stuff people spend their time on ground avoiding being productive with as well. 

Last week's TechNerd here.