Southwest Airlines: Wi-Fi on Every Flight by Early 2010

Social media and Internet addicts, rejoice! When you board a Southwest Airlines flight sometime early next year, you’re going to be able to surf the web via Wi-Fi.

Southwest Airlines is joining Virgin America, American, Delta, United and others in offering Wi-Fi on its flights. The airline just finished its first round of testing on four different aircraft and has decided to roll out Wi-Fi across its entire fleet. In fact, we covered the original tests last year.

The Wi-Fi wil be powered by Row 44, a satellite and broadband service company. This is interesting because Wi-Fi on Delta, American, and Virgin are all powered by rival Aircell.

While everything from YouTube to email was allowed during the test of Southwest’s Wi-Fi, you’re probably not going to be able to use VoIP, Skype, or video chatting. This is a restriction most airlines place on their Wi-Fi service in order to limit possibly disruptive chatter and noise for its other customers.

There’s no word on prices or exactly when every flight will have Wi-Fi, but the target is the first quarter in 2010. That’s not all that far away. Let’s hope other airlines keep picking up on this trend and offer us our Internet fix in the sky.