Wi-Fi to Fly in the Sky on American’s MD-80s, Boeing 737-800s

American Airlines is taking its high-altitude experiment with Wi-Fi out of the trial stage and has decided to install Gogoa Inflight Internet on more than 300 domestic aircraft over the next two years.

The expansion will help American Airlines further enhance its customers’ travel experience and meet their evolving travel needs. American, a founding member of the Oneworld Alliance, was the first U.S. airline to launch the Gogo service last August.

Since then, thousands of customers traveling on 15 of American’s Boeing 767-200 aircraft have enjoyed Inflight Internet service primarily on nonstop flights between New York JFK and San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Miami.

American will install the Aircella system on its domestic MD-80 and Boeing 737-800 aircraft fleets, beginning with 150 MD-80 aircraft this year. Gogo turns an American Airlines flight into a Wi-Fi hotspot, enabling passengers to surf the Web, check e-mail, send instant messages, access a corporate VPN and more.

Once the aircraft has reached 10,000 feet, users can simply turn on their Wi-Fi enabled devices –such as laptops, smartphones and handheld PDAs- then open their browsers and be directed to the Gogo portal page where they sign up and begin surfing.

Gogo is powered by the Aircell air-to-ground (ATG) system, which uses three small antennas installed outside the aircraft and connects to Aircell’s exclusive nationwide mobile broadband network.