Apple confirmed late Monday to AllThingsD that it had obtained a key executive from United Continental. The airline's CFO, Zane Rowe, had left to become a sales VP at Apple. Company representative Steve Dowling was short on details, but pointed to what it saw as a good track record with Rowe.
United and Continental Airlines have announced that they will have Wi-Fi access on all their main flights by 2015. The companies have chosen Panasonic Avionics to install the Wi-Fi systems on over 300 of their aircraft. The companies chose the Panasonic system because it offers Ku-band satellite technology that delivers faster air to ground speeds and wireless streaming of video content.
United Airlines and its soon-to-be-joined partner Continental staked out a first for flight by making itself the first major carrier in the US to completely drop paper among its 11,000 pilots by using the iPad. Along with shedding paper flight manuals, it's now the first of its size to replace its charts with the Apple tablet as well. Each iPad will carry Jeppesen Mobile FliteDeck (free, App Store) to provide worldwide maps in context.
Continental Airlines today set out more concrete plans for its in-flight Wi-Fi service. Pushed back from its original January 2009 target, the service is now due to launch in spring aboard 21 Boeing 757 airliners. Most of these will be present on domestic flights, the transport service says.
Continental Airlines today joined a previous approach by JetBlue and said it would begin offering Wi-Fi onboard some of its aircraft. As with details revealed shortly after news of the earlier offering, the new LiveTV-backed service will provide travelers with comparatively low-bandwidth Internet features through most of a given flight. Notebooks, smartphones, and other portable devices that support e-mail and instant messaging services through RIM's BlackBerry network or Yahoo's services will be able to communicate with others on the ground.
