In-flight Internet too tempting for some

updated 2:46 p.m. ET Dec. 11, 2007

NEW YORK - Warren Adelman's colleagues know him as "Thumbs": Like many executives, he is adept at checking e-mail on his BlackBerry and does it almost constantly.

Unable to do so during flights, Adelman welcomes business trips as "an opportunity to decompress a little bit from the constant flow of e-mail, perhaps catch up on a book."

"It's one of the few downtime environments you get in this day and age," said Adelman, president and chief operating officer of GoDaddy.com Inc., a registration company for Internet domain names.

An invasion of his sanctuary is imminent, though, as airlines around the world would make available in-flight Internet services.

On Tuesday, JetBlue Airways Corp. began offering e-mail and instant messaging on one aircraft. Broader high-speed services, including Web surfing, are to come next year on some flights of AMR Corp.'s American Airlines, Virgin America and Alaska Air Group Inc.'s Alaska Airlines.

And in-flight entertainment provider Panasonic Avionics Corp., a unit of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., has been testing Internet offerings with Australia's Qantas Airways Ltd. Other airlines are to join next year.

Airlines see airborne Internet access, which typically uses Wi-Fi technology deemed safe for flights, as producing both revenue and a competitive edge against one another and over trains, buses and automobiles.

Frequent fliers said the temptation to go online would be overwhelming, though they were divided over whether they would rejoice.

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Jay Pease, a regional marketing director for Exstream Software LLC, said he needs to rest during trans-Atlantic flights for morning meetings in Europe. But he often has trouble sleeping, and he worried that "the temptation would be there to say, `I'll just log on and surf the Internet for a while.'"

Jon Carson, chief executive with online fundraising company cMarket Inc., said that between kids, meetings and electronic interruptions on the ground, "I get some of my best work done on the plane."

Good decisions and breakthroughs often arise from "the kind of deeper, reflecting thinking" not possible when new messages continually arrive, Carson said.

Adelman's colleague, GoDaddy General Counsel Christine Jones, disagreed.

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"I would seriously turn cartwheels," said Jones, who admits to responding to e-mail while sitting in church. "The carriers that don't offer it will start hearing from their customers, your frequent fliers, `Hey guys, you have to get on board with it.'"

Peter Allen, chief marketing officer for the management consulting company TPI, said he already spends 80 percent of his flights on his laptop — often catching up on e-mail and waiting for an Internet connection upon landing to transmit those messages.

Robert Tas, chief executive of the online advertising company Active Athlete Media Inc., said he usually winds up reading printouts of articles, reports and other items he could read online. And if he had Web access he could dig deeper into items of interest.

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