Wi-Fi on the Delta Shuttle

Posted by: Justin Bachman on December 15

The Boston-NYC-DC shuttle corridor is getting Internet access starting Dec. 16 on five Delta Shuttle (DAL) flights, including free trials for the rest of the month. After that, it’ll cost $9.95 on flights less than three hours and $12.95 for flights longer than that. Joy Alert: The hordes of business travelers will now have even more opportunity to work. The airline plans to have the Aircell Gogo system on its entire domestic fleet in 2009. (A lone 757 in the fleet will also fly with Wi-Fi service this week.)

All well and good, but a more interesting development, to my mind, is coming to the Delta Shuttle: smaller jets to Washington. By March 28, Delta will transfer the LaGuardia-Reagan National flights to Shuttle America, which will fly the 76-seat Embraer 175 jets. The New York-Boston route will continue with the larger MD-88s. Delta says the change will help it better match capacity and traffic to Washington and that it will continue to offer first-class seats on the smaller jets. A USAirways (LCC) spokeswoman says the airline is pleased with its 124-seat Airbus A319s on the route and has no plans to change planes.

Side Note to Fellow Airplane Geeks: Delta has released photos of the first Northwest 747 repainted in Delta’s livery, shown here. While larger-plane envy was nowhere to be found in the millions of words expended over Delta’s purchase, you can bet that the Delta brass in Atlanta sure are happy to see this.