In-Flight Internet Too Tempting for Some

Brad Garlinghouse, left, senior vice president of Yahoo, demonstrates the capabilities of a laptop during a media preview flight aboard "BetaBlue," an Airbus A320 aircraft equipped with an onboard wireless network, Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2007. JetBlue will start offering free online messaging services on one of its planes next week, becoming among the first airlines to offer in-flight Internet access. Passengers can use Yahoo e-mail and instant messaging services on laptops equipped with Wi-Fi wireless access. They can also check other personal and work e-mail on two BlackBerry models that have wireless capabilities. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan) (Mark Lennihan - AP)

"I would seriously turn cartwheels," said Jones, who admits to responding to e-mail while sitting in church. "The carriers that don't offer it will start hearing from their customers, your frequent fliers, `Hey guys, you have to get on board with it.'"

Peter Allen, chief marketing officer for the management consulting company TPI, said he already spends 80 percent of his flights on his laptop _ often catching up on e-mail and waiting for an Internet connection upon landing to transmit those messages.

Robert Tas, chief executive of the online advertising company Active Athlete Media Inc., said he usually winds up reading printouts of articles, reports and other items he could read online. And if he had Web access he could dig deeper into items of interest.

"Reading time is still important," Tas said. "Having the Internet would allow me to do it more efficiently."

Frequent travelers said catching up with e-mail in the air frees up their time at their destination _ in the hotel or back home with family.

"If I ended up feeling bad about it and resenting it, I would turn off my computer," said Andy Halliday, chief executive of the collaborative tribute site Tribbit.com. "It's still a choice. Right now you don't have that choice."

Jim Lanzone, chief executive of IAC/InterActiveCorp's search company Ask.com, spent Saturday's 10-hour flight from San Francisco to London reading magazines and Steve Martin's "Born Standing Up." He watched television shows on his iPod and has DVDs of "The Wire" ready for his return flight.

Lanzone doesn't mind that Internet access would cut into all that.

"If I had something on deadline, I'm not going to be able to relax anyway," he said. "I can enjoy DVDs, music and books more because I'll be able to get things off my mind."

But that's a false choice, said Deb Wenger, a Virginia Commonwealth University journalism professor who finished Martha Grimes' mystery novel "The Five Bells and Bladebone" during a recent trip to New York.

"The reality is that there's a certain luxury in being able, in a guilt-free way, to tell someone you're not available now. It will be, `I'm not making myself available to you,'" Wenger said. "It's a different message that sometimes employers don't want to hear."

Tim Winship, editor at large for the travel Web site Smarter Travel, predicted those stacks of magazines and books people save for long flights will start piling up again.

"The net effect of bringing Internet access on to airplanes is that there will be less reading accomplished," Winship said. "The question is how much."

Steve Jones, an Internet studies expert at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said unconnected time already has been shrinking because of cell phones and other handheld devices with Internet access. Soon, Jones said, people will get a break only during takeoffs and landings, as required by law.

Many frequent fliers, though, are looking forward to such continual access.

Henry Harteveldt, a Forrester Research analyst who follows the travel industry, flew to New York on Monday simply to take Tuesday's inaugural JetBlue flight with e-mail access.

"I find this to be a godsend," Harteveldt said via e-mail from Flight 641 to San Francisco. "The ability to stay in touch with my office and clients on a six-hour transcon flight is terrific. I hate that sense of dread when I turn on my BlackBerry after landing and get a flood of e-mail. Now I can manage real time."