There the pilots circle Taliban strongholds like an airborne 911 service and zoom in when American and British troops, spread thin and often panicked, call in airstrikes.
Boeing said yesterday that the top three United States airlines had canceled plans to invest in Connexion, its planned airborne Internet service, because of a sharp slowdown in air travel.
While the A380 will haul multitudes between major gateway airports, the Eclipse 500 is meant to carry a few passengers on fairly short routes, like an airborne car service.
Accompanied by her sardonic cat Jiji, and with a shaky grip of broomstick aviation, she winds up lodging with a kindly baker, for whom she begins an airborne delivery service.
[World Business, Section W.] An Airborne Car Service Eclipse, a maker of small jets, hopes to offer something like an airborne car service, meant to carry a few passengers on fairly short routes.
A third company competing to offer airborne Internet service is Row 44, which is developing a satellite-based system that will also function over oceans and internationally, though the plan is to offer service in North America first, said John Guidon, Row 44's chief executive.
While companies have been promising airborne Internet service for years — the aircraft maker Boeing offered a system that was adopted by a few international carriers but is now defunct — JetBlue will be the first carrier in the United States to offer access to the Web, at least in a limited way.
For instance, the Spanish low-cost airline Vueling charges a 4 euro "baby change fee" (roughly $5 at $1.27 to the euro) — the price to change a lap child's flight, not an airborne diaper service — a fee even Spirit Airlines hasn't tried in the United States.
