A few weeks ago while on a flight from Minneapolis to Dallas, I passed the two million frequent flier mile mark on American Airlines. This revelation got me to start thinking about all the time that I’ve spent cooped up in a hollow metal tube and how much nicer it would have been with a decent WiFi connection!So far, it seems that market financial forces and the FAA have been the main sticking points keeping WiFi from making its grand entrance at 30,000 feet. The airlines have been under considerable financial pressure for years now and with the high price of Jet A fuel, the prospect of taking a plane out of service for a few days to install WiFi gear is the making of a nightmare for the airline accountants.

Also, the airlines and the FAA have spent years touting the dangers of wireless devices on planes (whether real or imagined, we don’t really know yet). Sorry folks, but it’s going to take a complete ‘about face’ before WiFi on planes moves into the mainstream.

The other issue with WiFi in the Sky is the backhaul links. Just lighting up the inside of a metal tube with 802.11 signals isn’t really the hard part. How do you get the data off the plane and on to the ‘Net?

The two main methods at this point have been to send it to a satellite or send it down to base stations on the ground. I’ve been on customer networks that have had satellite links between their locations and it’s not fun. Email and slow browsing are the facts of life. Slow bandwidth, coupled with high/variable packet latency kills most advanced media from traversing the link.

Ground based stations seem to have the promise of more bandwidth and more control over the network, but placement of base stations can be problematic, unless an already mature technology is used (i.e. EVDO/GPRS).

Whatever the future holds for Internet access in the sky, I sure hope is comes before I hit the next million mile mark!