• by Aaron Baar , February 10, 2009

BlackBerry addicts, rejoice (perhaps)! Southwest Airlines is testing the idea of wireless Internet accessibility on its planes.

The air carrier rolled out its first WiFi-enabled airplane earlier this week, and will add three others by March. "With the developments of the last couple years, and the ubiquity of connectivity across the planet, the skies are the last place where people can't do their business and can't be informed by the Internet," Dave Ridley, svp of marketing and revenue management, tells Marketing Daily. "It's kind of the last horizon."

For the test, the Wi-Fi connection will be free and passengers will be given instructions about how to operate the service upon boarding the plane. The company has also contracted with Yahoo to provide an in-flight home page that will include a flight tracker (which will show the airplane's position and fly-over points of interest) as well as news and information. The page will also include destination-relevant information.

The test will run for 60 days, Ridley says, at which point the carrier will gauge customer reaction, usage and ease of use before determining whether to roll out the service on all of its planes. The company will also likely determine how much to charge for the service. "Our business model is that we're paying [a secondary company] for the service," Ridley says. "They're the wholesaler and we'll be the retailer, so there needs to be some kind of margin."

Southwest will not be promoting the test in any of its marketing materials, mostly because the carrier can't predict which routes the Wi-Fi-equipped planes will be flying on any given day, Ridley says. "We have a fleet of 500 aircraft, and with only four aircraft equipped, it will be very random," he says. "It's practically impossible to have a pointed promotional campaign to encourage people to fly on those planes."