Free in-flight Wi-Fi coming to Virgin planes

Virgin America gets free Wi-Fi
Virgin America gets free Wi-Fi

Virgin is to become the first airline to do offer free Wi-Fi, with customers on its Virgin America service to receive the complimentary service – according to its wireless partner Google.

Although Wi-Fi is available on a number of business flights – including ones on British Airways – it definitely isn't free, with the price of connecting enough to put most passengers off of their airline food.

Virgin has decided to buck the paid-for trend and offer free Wi-Fi. Before this, to log on wirelessly on a Virgin plane it would have set you back $13 (£7.90) per flight.

Stay connected

The announcement was made on Google's official blog this week by Jeff Aguero, a Google product marketer. Virgin America is a customer of Google's Gogo Wi-Fi service.

"Whether it's using Gmail to confirm an airport pick up time with your brother, doing some last minute gift shopping for your niece on Google Product Search or searching Google.com for a good sweet potato pie recipe before touchdown – we hope this makes it a bit easier to stay connected with family and friends while you're up in the air," said Aguero about the free service.

There's no word as of yet whether this freebie will make it to UK shores.

Via Google Blog and Yahoo

Marc Chacksfield

Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.