Wireless Internet in the Air? Bring it on!

If it's Wednesday, I'm flying home today.

My Saturday paper reported that Southwest Airlines is considering selling inflight perks such as on-board wireless internet. Wow! That's great news, but they should make it FREE. Want more customers? Give them free internet.

I think I'm like a growing majority of Americans who don't like to be without internet for even a day. With more and more communication coming through email, if I let my email go unattended for 24 hours, I'm faced with a landslide when I get back to my desk. I receive over 100 emails per day (and that's with most of the spam weeded out), so you can imagine how long it takes to go through a weekend's worth of backlog.

My closest major airport, Tampa International, has free wireless internet all through the facility, and I LOVE it. I've also discovered free wireless internet in Anchorage Alaska's airport . . . and I sure wish other airports would follow their example. Nothing's more irritating to see that wireless is available, but it'll cost me $9.95 to log on for an hour (typically, they promise 24 hours of access, but most people don't sit in the airport for 24 hours--at least, no one wants to.)

And what's up with hotels? I've discovered that lower priced and medium priced hotels offer free wireless internet, but some of the swankiest joints (like the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs and Saddlebrook Resort in Tampa), charge you a daily rate. Come on, now. If they're charging a couple of hundred dollars PER NIGHT, don't you think they could include free internet as a perk?

Kudos to Embassy Suites and Hampton Inns, both of whom have had free wireless every time I've stayed there (well . . . since wireless was invented, that is.)

One more thought--on 9/11/2001, when I heard about flight 93 and all the phone calls that were being made from that doomed flight, I kept thinking, "But telephone signals are supposed to interfere with navigation systems, aren't they?" Apparently not. I've heard the same thing about wireless aboard planes, but apparently that's not true, either.

So bring it on, Southwest. But let us have it free, and I'll be the first in those lines you're so proud of.

~~Angie