Southwest Begins Testing Onboard Wi-Fi

Oakland flight to feature the new service
Southwest Airlines says it is going ahead with plans to install internet on its planes. The carrier says up to four aircraft will be configured for wireless internet by March 2009, including one plane already testing the Wi-Fi technology. That plane, according to Today in the Sky, will be operating to and from the Oakland airport on Wednesday, giving passengers an opportunity to try out the service at no cost. According to Southwest, the service is being offered on a trial basis for now, as they have yet to receive final FCC approval.

Continental Airlines began testing of paperless boarding passes last week at Houston Airport. If all goes well, you'll be paperless for an upcoming flight as well. How does this technology work? Passengers can use cellular phones or PDA’s as boarding passes using encrypted bar codes. It cuts out all of the needless paper usage AND in totally in sync with the way technology is developing today. The barcodes are received by the passenger as an SMS text message. Passengers will receive their boarding passes electronically, then present the barcode to be scanned by the TSA at the security checkpoint. The idea is to provide additional security, as the barcodes are not as easily reproduced as counterfeit boarding passes. Read the rest of the story at BusinessTravelLogue