JetBlue Airways is set to launch free inflight email and instant-messaging services on one of its planes equipped with a wireless network beginning Tuesday.
The carrier has partnered with Yahoo and Research in Motion (Rim) to test the service in the first plane called "BetaBlue" for test flights with passengers. If things go well in the coming months JetBlue said it would install the system on its whole fleet.
Passengers on the carrier who have Wi-Fi-enabled laptops and Yahoo Mail or Yahoo Messenger accounts will be able to send email and instant messages to contacts on the ground and receive messages from those contacts.
JetBlue believes its wireless system will be able to support everybody on the plane, Nate Quigely chief executive of JetBlue's LiveTV unit told the Wall Street Journal. Quigley said long wait times were not expected because not everybody will have a Wi-Fi enabled device and not everyone will be sending messages at the same time.
On a test flight earlier this week the system took 20 minutes to connect and get running, a JetBlue spokesman said. Once the system was online the spokesman said it worked beautifully.
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