A look at which U.S. airlines have made which choices when it comes to offering internet access in the skies. To read the related story, click here.

Alaska Airlines
Alaska has the particular issue of flying most of its routes over sea, mountains, and the middle of nowhere—not that there's anything wrong with the middle of nowhere, mind you, but it's awfully hard to locate a cell ground station there. As a result, Row 44 and Alaska were a logical pair.

Alaska plans to test the service in a single plane, but Steve Jarvis, Alaska's marketing head, said the airline would fly the craft over a varied set of terrain and routes to get user feedback over a 60-day period. "We'll fly it everywhere around the network in this test, except for Hawaii," Jarvis said. Service is free during testing.

Although Alaska hasn't committed to Row 44, Jarvis was extremely positive about the offering, speaking of a deployment as something that will happen unless testing of the service or passenger response is other than what the firm expects.

Alaska lacks electrical outlets in any of its aircraft, but that shouldn't be a problem with its typically short-haul flights. Jarvis said many of the airlines' routes take two to three hours to cover.

American Airlines
American was the first in the air with its 15 767-200s equipped for action in September 2008; since then the firm has said little. Aircell CEO Jack Blumenstein said that American was moving forward in 2009, but offered few details. American Airlines didn't respond to a request for comment.

American has electrical outlets on many of its aircraft models. On the 767-200, there's a scatter pattern of outlets across coach, and outlets at every seat in first class and business.

Delta Air Lines
Delta has the most ambitious service planned, despite a slightly later start than its original announcements. The airline committed last year to equipping 330 planes, representing its entire domestic wide-body fleet. The company had planned to have 75 planes set with Aircell late last year and to be installing service on 10 planes per week by this point in time.

Aircell's John Happ, its executive vice president for airlines, said that Delta had originally intended to handle Aircell equipment installation itself. The airline "determined that Delta didn't want to be in the Aircell/Gogo installation business," and Aircell has been ramping up its own installation lines in Atlanta for Delta. (Delta didn't provide someone for comment in time for this article.)

Happ said the original target of equipping the domestic Delta fleet before the end of third quarter 2009 was still on track, and Aircell had reached the target of installing its equipment in a single overnight window.

"It's a beehive of activity over there," Happ said.

Delta has power at every seat in its trans-continental Boeing aircraft, and none at all in other models.

JetBlue
With 1MHz of air-to-ground spectrum, JetBlue's plans still remain obscure. That's enough to handle email and low-bandwidth applications, but not enough for video-streaming or a plane full of bored people browsing the Web.

For now, JetBlue has a single plane that reports indicate is using Verizon's old, but still active, ground network formerly used for AirFone. Verizon and JetBlue were obliged to share spectrum during the AirFone phase-out. This offers a dial-up speed connection, which conforms to reports made in early test flights.

Northwest
Northwest was acquired by Delta in early 2008, and will start on its plans for deployment across probably about 200 of the 275 planes in its fleet. Aircell's CEO said that the Northwest schedule would start gelling later in the year. (Northwest has no planes equipped with power outlets at seats.)

Southwest
Southwest Airlines recently put two planes in the air with Row 44's satellite service. Whitney Eichinger, a spokesperson for the airline, said the third and fourth planes will soon go live. Service is free during testing.

Eichinger didn't hint at Southwest's future plans. The airline is attempting to fly the service on some routes regularly to ask passengers about the offering after they've had the opportunity to use it a few times.

Southwest will measure success by several factors. "For the most part, we're testing not only the customer feedback, but also the technology, and how that's working on the aircraft; and the consistency of the technology," Eichinger said.

Southwest has a fleet of more than 530 Boeing 737s in different configurations; none have power outlets for passengers.

United Airlines p.s.
So far, United has modest ambitions for an in-flight test. The company will let Aircell install access on 13 Boeing 757-200s in the second half of 2009. These planes are part of the company's p.s. operation that flies from SFO and LAX to JFK—a perfect long-haul route with technical and price-insensitive business fliers. Power outlets are at every seat.

Virgin America
Virgin America has a modest fleet now comprising 28 planes, all Airbus A319s and A320s, with 13 planes equipped with Aircell's Gogo, according to Virgin America's Abby Lunardini. She said the entire fleet would be unwired by May, to make Virgin America the first domestic airline with WiFi on all its planes.

Virgin America launched a new SFO-to-Boston Logan route recently, and has committed to having only planes with Gogo fly that route. "The longest-haul flight was a good place to isolate WiFi service," Lunardini said.

Virgin America also has added a WiFi popup for its reservations site to let passengers know whether a plane is scheduled to fly that has internet service on board. But, Lunardini noted, that's only necessary until May.

Virgin America has electrical outlets at every seat in the plane, along with a USB charging port.