Scott Spiro Blog

Folks, I’m going to deviate slightly from Green IT topics today and talk to you about a monumental event. Well, at least to me. You know it’s funny, I kinda valued my time on an airplane as a golden opportunity to either be very productive or truly relax without worry of anyone being able to contact me. Have you thought about it? Flying gives you an excellent excuse to be completely unreachable and unavailable to accomplish anything while you’re in the air (except learn to use your “out of office” reply system in Outlook).

Well Virgin is about to change all of that thanks to their new wi-fi service called “Gogo” that is being rolled out across the Virgin America fleet. Yesterday, Virgin partnered with YouTube on an inaugural sneak peek flight that brought TV and internet celebreties on board to stream live video at 35,000 ft. Check out the official site.  In fact, they are naming their new plane “YouTube Air”!

This event was followed by a concert in San Francisco. Wow. I have a few practical questions for Virgin America however:

1. What type of security is being offered on these flights? Is there any virus protection in place to secure your machine from viruses or malware that could linger on fellow passengers’ computers?

2. Will wireless work throughout the entire passenger cabin or just upper class?

3. Are there additional fees involved to use the service?

Now, I wonder when they’ll offer this on their Virgin Atlantic fleet? I fly to the UK a few times a year and I want to know how long I’ve got before my “privacy in the sky” is no more and I’ll be forced against my will to be productive again.