Us Airways Flight Tracker

Gogo unveils plans for new inflight multimedia - 538

Beyond the new, crisper logo, the inflight wifi provider is rolling out a new in-air entertainment system as well, expected to launch in the fourth quarter of this year. At Gogo headquarters in Itasca, IL, CEO Michael Small, CMO Ash ElDifrawi and Vice President of Products Niels Steenstrup announced the company’s goals of extending its services beyond Internet connectivity.

At the company’s unveiling, the Gogo team showed off new features for passengers, airline and media partners. The cornerstone of the in-air system relies not on dated embedded inflight entertainment offerings, but rather on a passenger’s Web-enabled personal devices. This new portal will offer services that include real-time travel information, destination content, news and information, shopping deals and social network integration. Gogo also plans to release a new streaming video product, which allows airlines to offer movies and TV shows to passengers priced on a sliding scale. With the exception of paid internet connectivity and the streaming video content, many of the above features will be free to passengers on all Gogo-enabled flights.

Many of these features are a direct result of partnerships Gogo has made. Gilt Groupe will power the inflight shopping experience, while destination-specific content will appeal to passengers planning their itinerary before they land. For instance, OpenTable will be one such available option for passengers seeking restaurant reservations. Of course, there are other standard tools available: flight information, weather, and what the Gogo team calls the “Are we there yet?” map—tracking a flight’s movement in realtime. 

“It offers the flexibility to provide a robust set of experiences…that’s relevant to each individual airline or specific journey.  It also sends us farther down the path to making Gogo everyone’s favorite part of flying,” said ElDifrawi.

Gogo is available on all domestic AirTran Airways, Delta Air Lines, and Virgin America flights and on select Air Canada, Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, United Airlines, and US Airways. According to Steenstrup, the company is in early stages of developing international connectivity, but doesn’t foresee the technology being available until 2015.

How the airlines handle the 'mishandled' luggage problem

Jaime Sigal’s suitcase felt a little light when he picked it up from the conveyor belt in Sao Paolo, Brazil, so he gave the heavy-duty ballistic nylon bag a careful once-over.

Sure enough, the zipper appeared to have been forced open. Sigal, who works for an export management company in Miami, made a beeline for the LAN Airlines counter. Three items were missing from his luggage: a blazer, a leather jacket and boots. He’d paid a total of $1,700 for the items last year.

Every day, the same scenario repeats itself in airports everywhere. Luggage is lost or pilfered, and airlines do their best — or not — to find or replace it. Last year, there were more than 2 million reports of mishandled luggage among domestic airlines, according to the Transportation Department. That’s down slightly from the year before, when roughly 2.1 million bags went astray. (While the government doesn’t distinguish among lost, damaged, delayed and pilfered baggage — referring to it all as simply “mishandled” — airline passengers certainly do.)

The biggest offender? Among the major non-regional carriers, American Airlines had the worst record, with 3.82 reports per 1,000 passengers. Interestingly, American was the first of the big carriers to institute a fee for all checked bags, back in 2008. The second- and third-most loss-prone were Delta Air Lines and Southwest Airlines.

The problem isn’t just lost luggage; it’s what happens next. The rules vary, depending on where you lost the bag and how long it takes to recover it.

Consider what happened to Sigal. After he filed a claim, LAN offered to pay him either $300 or cut him a $600 flight voucher. He refused both. “I feel that while in the custody of the airline, the suitcase was opened and the items were stolen,” he told me. “The reimbursement is not even close to the replacement cost of the items.”

Under the Montreal Convention, an international treaty that governs compensation for the victims of air disasters, Sigal was entitled to a maximum of about $1,800. (The amount fluctuates, because it’s based on a combination of worldwide currencies.)

I suggested that Sigal mention to LAN that its offer came nowhere near to what the Montreal Convention calls for. When he did, LAN asked for receipts for the stolen items, which he sent. The airline offered him about $1,800 in flight vouchers, which he accepted.

There isn’t always a happy ending, though. Earlier this year, reader Leonard Henderson contacted me after his ski gear got lost on a flight to Telluride, Colo. He had to buy new clothes, for which US Airways promised to reimburse him. But when the time came for the airline to pay up, it balked. Henderson had paid $2,500 for new gear, but the airline covered only $800.

Frommer's Seattle and Portland 2001

Frommer's 2001 Florida

The Everything Family Guide to the Caribbean

Aviation safety : efforts to implement flight operational quality assurance programs : report to Congressional requesters

Frommer's Cancun, Cozumel and the Yucatan 2001