I have never added up my annual air miles, but I guess I fly about 200,000 miles per year. I make the NY-West Coast trip quite often not to mention longhaul flights around the world.

WiFi was available for a "few seconds" on ANA and Lufthansa, but they both dropped the service this year. This service was marvelous. It was flawless and it did not bother fellow passengers. Supposedly these two airlines and Boeing dropped out of the business for cost reasons.

I recently flew JetBlue. JetBlue has about 30 live TV channels as well as XM radio. I am not a tech person, but while watching everyone using the TV on JetBlue for free, I pondered about WiFi again. I figured there must be a way to have inflight WiFi at a reasonable cost for both the passenger and the airline. I could not believe that the WiFi problem could not be solved economically.

Then yesterday I saw an article in The Wall Street Journal entitled "Rockwell Collins to Offer The Web for More Fliers." Terrific news. Rockwell Collins and its partner Airinc have successfully implemented WiFi on private jets around the world. Now they are going to do this for commercial flight.

Lo and behold the first airline to go for the service, according the article, will be low fare carrier Southwest. It figures that Southwest would be first. They make money every year even when most airlines are losing their shirts. They are efficient and think outside the envelope (which is probably why they make money).

Southwest says in the article that they are getting WiFi to keep their business travelers content. Leave it to a low cost carrier to be the first to grasp the value of having inflight WiFi.

I presume that this foray by Southwest will get the ball rolling so that all airlines will have WiFi in coming years?