Wonder How Well AA's In-flight Wi-Fi Works?

Kevin Maney points out: American Airlines has started offering its in-flight Wi-Fi, and for those of you who wonder whether it works well enough, my friend Joanna Stern of Laptop magazine tried it out and live blogged about it. She apparently had no problem using Pandora, Meebo, Gmail and a bunch of other sites at the same time, and later settled in to watch a Family Guy episode on Hulu. The one place she got stuck was trying to make voice calls on Skype. AirCell, the company that provides the flying Wi-Fi, intentionally blocks VoIP calls -- basically so passengers don't annoy the hell out of each other with incessant talking.

As Wired has reported, however, a little workaround called Phweet can let you break through AirCell's block and make voice calls. Joanna reported that it worked, but not great. This idea of VoIP calls on airliners is not likely to be solved by technology -- it's a social issue. Airlines are going to have to decide whether to explicitly ban talking on voice calls, and it's going to get tricky for passengers and flight attendants as some self-important dorks force the issue by making Phweet calls over the coming months.