American Airlines Wi-Fis Fleet

American Airlines announced today that it’s joining rival Delta Air Lines (DAL) in making Wi-Fi Internet connections available to most domestic passengers, and across its entire fleet of some 600 aircraft, reports USA Today.

American was the first U.S. airline to launch the Gogo service last August. Since then, thousands of customers traveling on 15 of American’s Boeing 767-200 aircraft have enjoyed Inflight Internet service primarily on nonstop flights between New York JFK and San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Miami.

American, No. 2 in the world in passenger traffic after Delta acquired Northwest Airlines last year, says it will install the Aircell system on its domestic MD-80 and Boeing 737-800 aircraft fleets, beginning with 150 MD-80 aircraft this year.

Delta plans to roll out Wi-Fi across its entire fleet in 2009 using the Aircell system. Virgin America expects to have its fleet of 28 planes outfitted with Aircell’s Gogo Wi-Fi by the end of June.

Southwest Airlines is using a satellite connection from Row 44 and Alaska Airlines may follow while JetBlue is using its own flavor of wireless with complimentary email, shopping and instant messaging. JetBlue and other airlines, such as Continental, use LiveTV’s satellite-based television programming service. JetBlue, which owns LiveTV, won rights to 1 MHz of the 800-MHz spectrum last year for their internet service.

Aircell’s price for the Gogo service ranges from $7.95 to $12.95 based on length of flight and whether the device is a handheld PDA or a laptop computer. Aircell’s pricing plans are:

Long Flight Pass: $12.95 – Standard price for flights longer than 3 hours
Short Flight Pass: $9.95 – Standard price for flights 3 hours or less
Mobile Flight Pass: $7.95 – Mobile device pricing for customers using a handheld device on Gogo-equipped flights of any length

The service will be available only after planes reach 10,000 feet so it doesn’t interfere with communications between the cockpit and air traffic control.