Free Wi-Fi on Delta flights

Delta Airlines, in partnership with eBay, is offering free in-flight internet from today until 30 November. All passengers flying with a Delta Wi-Fi equipped aircraft can benefit on this complimentary Gogo internet service. More than 260 Wi-Fi enabled aircrafts of Delta fly 1,000 flights daily.

Delta operates the world’s largest fleet of Wi-Fi enabled aircrafts. The promotion is aimed to provide innovative products and services, and to enable customers to get in touch with the web even across the sky.

Ranjan Goswami, Director for Customer Experience of Delta, said that the airline’s Thanksgiving promotion marks the first time that Delta has been able to extend onboard internet access as benefit to their loyal customers.

The airline company is rapidly installing Wi-Fi across its 300 aircrafts, which is scheduled to be in full swing by the end of the year. There will be an additional 200 pre-merger Northwest aircrafts to be added on the existing number of fleets serving Delta by mid-2010.

Greg Fant, Vice President for Marketing of eBay, said that the partnership with Delta will provide its customers a variety of selection on travel holidays with amazing value and will allow shopping while in the sky. The expected number of passengers to use the promotion is at 1 million.

Similar to the speed of mobile internet on the ground, Wi-Fi is available across the continental US and is operational when the plane cruises at 10,000ft.

Delta aircrafts with in-flight Wi-Fi capability have a ‘Wi-Fi Onboard’ symbol near the door. Supported devices on Delta’s onboard Wi-Fi service include laptops, PDAs, Symbian mobile phones and smartphones.