American Airlines Gogo

American Airlines is now offering passengers inflight broadband service through the company Aircell. Like all things in the airline industry these days, it comes with a price tag.

Marking the beginning of the next wireless revolution, American Airlines made history today with the launch of the mobile broadband service, Gogo(TM) provided by Aircell(R).

That is quite a statement from the airline’s press release. American Airlines passengers can now surf away on the airline’s Boeing 767-200 aircraft, which services nonstop flights between New York and San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles, and New York and Miami.

“We are pleased to provide our customers with the unprecedented ability to stay connected to their family, friends and business associates on the ground via the Internet while traveling at 30,000 feet above the United States,” said Dan Garton, American’s Executive Vice President of Marketing. “With today’s launch, American Airlines makes history as the first and only U.S. airline to offer customers full inflight Internet connectivity, demonstrating once again our industry leadership and focus on our customers.”

The service will be available to customers in first class, as well as steerage. The fun will set you back $12.95 on flights more than three hours, which include all of the flights in which the service is currently available. Cell phone and Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) services are supposedly not available, though I did read something about there being a crafty loophole through Twitter.

With this new technology, passengers can surf the Web, check any email, IM their homies, access a corporate VPN, and more. American would like remind you that all electronic devices should be powered off at times when the aircraft is below 10,000 feet. Seriously, some guy was ticketed for using his cell phone a few months ago for using his phone during landing.

It sounds like using Gogo is a piece of cake. All you have to do is turn on your Wi-Fi enabled device like a laptop, smartphone or PDA, open your browsers and be directed to the Gogo portal page where you sign up