Inflight connectivity provider Gogo is stressing that only 2% of the flights featuring its service are subject to a new pricing trial designed to combat exhausting limited bandwidth.
News about the pricing change to $10 per hour has spread rapidly, and Gogo manager of community marketing Scott Carmichael says the message that reached the media “was that everything had changed on all the flights”. The only routes included in the scheme are New York to Los Angeles and San Francisco, clarifies Carmichael. Virgin America operates in those markets alongside competitor United, which features Gogo’s connectivity option on its Premium Service cross-country flights.
“We started off with flights where we have the most pressing bandwidth constraints,” explains Carmichael, who says altering price points is not a new practice for Gogo. “In order to manage our bandwidth the most effective way we do experiment with pricing,” he states. Gogo is currently offered on roughly 6,800 daily flights within the US.
At present, Virgin America charges $17.95 for Gogo access on flights three hours or longer and $9.95 on a flight spanning 1.5-3 hours. Pricing varies by airline, and United Airlines does not publish prices for its connectivity offering.
Asked if Gogo had concerns about customer pushback regarding the pricing change Carmichael says the company was always concerned about the perceptions of its passengers, “but in this case we have to balance demand – how many passenger are online – with the price”.
He stresses that Gogo’s move to charging $10 per hour is not the end of flat-rate pricing on those select transcontinental flights. The company still sells flight passes for those markets, and recommends passengers pre-purchase the flat-rate packages on the ground before their departure.
Gogo is preparing to roll out its next-generation ATG-4 connection solution that promises three times more bandwidth per aircraft. As part of a contract extension with United, the carrier’s P.S. service will feature the bolstered bandwidth, but the pricing change is separate from that upgrade.
Carmicheal did not specify if additional flights would be included in the new $10 per hour price point. “The thing about being a leader in this market is we can’t turn to a research firm to tell us what the best thing to do is. So in this case it is a question of we do these price trials, we see how the feedback is and see we see how things are performing.”
September 21, 2012 at 5:32 pm
Ha! I’ve given up on in-flight WiFi, Gogo’s and the others. Why? The author correctly points out that bandwidth is limited, but the problem is far worse than noted. On some transcon flights, that shared bandwidth can make the service so SLOW as to be almost unusable. In my experience, on about 25% of flights, it does not work at all. That said, the provider’s billing system ALWAYS seems to work. Having charges for dysfunctional service credited/refunded is more than difficult and sometimems impossible. And lastly, the prices, $17.95 for a long flight and/or this new $10 per hour structure are nothing short of abusive. Since about August 1, I’ve just done without. For a transcon flight, I’m simply out of touch for the duration. For longer, international flights, the service is rarely available, so my assiciates and I just understand that that I’m not available. That is now also the case for domestic travel and we’ll just have to adapt. It is far too expensive, it often does not work at all and when it does, it is too often so slow that it might as well not even be there. Until the technology inprovevs – a lot – and the proce comes down – a lot – I’m not going to use it.
-C