Boeing’s Connexion system
I’m somewhere over the North Atlantic, connected to the internet via Boeing’s Connexion system. It’s a satellite internet access system that works anywhere on (or above) earth, and SAS’s international flights have had it for about a year. They connect to the internet via a satellite, and then they have a wireless system just like you use in your home for using the internet from within the airplane. I’ve used it several times, and it rocks — fast, reliable, it just plain works.
But Boeing has announced they’ll be pulling the plug on this system at the end of this year. Their strategy was to develop the technology and then sell it off, but apparently they’ve found no takers. And it’s not profitable, so they’re going to kill it.
Now maybe there’s a ton of details I don’t know about — and I’m sure there are — but this doesn’t make any sense to me. Just charge more! It’s at $29 for a 10-hour flight right now, and I think most business travelers, who are already paying hundreds or thousands for the ticket, would gladly pay a multiple of that price. Frankly, I think they could double or triple the price without losing a significant percentage of the users.
But instead of charging more, they’ve taken to giving it away, as they did on this flight. Is that to make more people aware of the service and try to seduce a buyer?
Well, from my selfish point of view that tactic sucks. I mean, check out what happened (to the right) when I finally got connected to upload the photos on that last post! I assume that’s because every laptop on the plane is trying to watch videos all at once. Hell, some guys are probably uploading huge batches of photos all at once. 
Lucky for me, somebody must have crashed or gave up, because my “4 hours” turned out to be about 30 minutes. Boeing, I want Connexion! Don’t kill it! Charge more! Another gin and tonic, please!
I love Business Class.
This entry was posted on Friday, October 6th, 2006 at 8:36 am. You can subscribe to comments on this post through its RSS feed.
on October 6, 2006 at 9:36 pm vinod wrote:
Hi doug, I didnt know about this technology, Its nice to have a internet connection over the earth also..
Hope ur trip was wonderful..
on October 7, 2006 at 7:50 am Doug wrote:
It was, Vinod. I had a great time, although it was a tiring trip and I’m glad to be home now.
Regarding the in-flight internet service, check this out. I took those photos to post from the flight, but then I realized I had put my camera-PC connection in the checked baggage so I couldn’t post any pictures directly from the flight.
Here are a couple of other funny things about my flight yesterday:
I responded to a colleague’s email, and he told me he had just seen a photo taken out a window by another Microsoft person on the same plane. Think about that … I’m flying across the Atlantic Ocean, I email a friend in Redmond and say “I’m on the flight,” and he responds “yes, I’ve seen a photo just taken from that flight.”
The person sitting next to me on that flight was a Microsoft employee, a PM in Windows OEM sales. So that’s eight times in a row now that on international flights the person sitting next to me has been from Microsoft as well.
on October 7, 2006 at 7:55 am Tom wrote:
Eight in a row is pretty wild. But I suspect they were just regular joes who didn’t want to be evangelized to, so they told the Evangelist next to them that they already worked there.
Welcome back!
on October 7, 2006 at 8:53 am Doug wrote:
I came back to a time warp, Tom. My home office door closed, and I opened it and it smelled of paint thinner. There was an ashtray on my desk, a CD of photos (thanks!), and a shiny new orange vice bolted to my countertop. That all seems a long time ago already.
on October 7, 2006 at 2:23 pm Tom wrote:
Yeah. I’ve already been trying to figure out when I/we can get out there, because it seems like it was a year ago. And I didn’t go to another continent in between!
on October 9, 2006 at 8:59 am Mr. Bruce wrote:
You’re an evangelist with a major software company in the Seattle area, one which flies its employees around the globe. You still know people at Boeing. Ever consider finding a name and giving them a call/email?
…just a thought… bp
on October 9, 2006 at 11:18 am Doug wrote:
Good idea, Bruce. Let me see what kind of trouble I can cause.
on June 29, 2008 at 3:03 pm The return of in-flight wireless? | Doug’s World wrote:
[…] trend, and soon we’d have wireless internet access on all flights. But then, to my horror, Boeing pulled the plug on its Connexion system a year later, and there has been no in-flight internet connectivity ever […]