Lufthansa Says Achtzig, Bitte!. Lufthansa liked the Boeing Connexion trial so much, they’re equipping the fleet: 80 Boeing and Airbus jets will have Connexion service by the end of 2004 for intercontinental flights at $25 to $35 per flight. In the trial, business and first class had Ethernet jacks, and the whole plane had Wi-Fi. However, Boeing was able to allow access only through a single obscure Wi-Fi card model. While it’s a logical audience to sell high-speed service to, and the price isn’t unreasonable given the captive audience and high costs, the question does remain whether there’s enough revenue to pay the costs for maintenance, support, and satellites. At an average of $30 per flight and 30 people per flight and a few dozen flights per day (maybe more?), the system might take years to pay back the installation costs. And planes are notoriously hard on electronics as the folks that installed seat-back systems discovered…. [Wi-Fi Networking News]
