Shortly after takeoff, we got a bag of corn chips. Then lunch. I had a choice of “pasta” or “beef.” Pasta sounded safer. I went with that.

– Henry Blodget, from a blog post entitled “I Was Quite Surprised By Some Things On My American Airlines International ‘Economy Class’ Flight”

The global payments provider is making the announcement tonight at a special event tied to CTIA, the wireless industry’s annual conference in New Orleans.

MasterCard is the latest — but probably not the last — to unveil its plans for the future of credit card transactions.

To date, a host of other competitors, spanning Visa, American Express, PayPal, Google and the U.S. wireless carriers, have also made announcements.

While all of the payment companies are approaching the digital wallet space with a slightly different product, from the consumer’s perspective they all end up looking somewhat the same — like PayPal.

In the case of MasterCard, PayPass Wallet will allow consumers to buy things online without having to memorize a 16-digit card number or in person by tapping a payment terminal with their phone. The solution is similar to Visa’s V.me digital wallet and American Express’s Serve-branded wallet.

For example, when checking out online with retailers that support PayPass, consumers can choose to enter a username and password to access their wallet. The PayPass Wallet will support multiple accounts, including competing payment providers.

“We spent a lot of time on the underlying technology,” said Ed McLaughlin, MasterCard’s chief emerging payments officer, in an interview. “It is designed for our partners to make sure consumers have a great experience online or in-store on your app. The ability to use any device you have and any account you’d want to invoke is a different approach to the closed-loop accounts.”

MasterCard will allow consumers to sign up for the wallet on its site, but it is primarily relying on banks to get users interested. This summer, it will be going live with the help of a dozen or so banks worldwide, including Citibank. Other major merchants are committing to adding PayPass to their online checkout systems, including American Airlines, Barnes & Noble and Newegg.

Mark Hung, a research director at Gartner, said it’s natural for MasterCard, American Express and Visa to move from the physical world of payments to online because consumers are already entering their credit card number online to check out. “They would like to see the same user experience, whether they are transacting online or offline,” he said.

With banks and retailers on board, Rick Oglesby, a senior analyst with Aite Group, said the focus for MasterCard will have to be on getting consumers interested in signing up.

“There’s definitely going to be some risk of consumer confusion,” Oglesby said, given the dozen of digital wallet options. “They are going to have to invest quite a lot in branding. … Even though the traditional payment companies are entering the space, the brands are relatively unknown. There will be confusion for consumers and merchants alike, and therefore, will require a signficant investment in terms of investing in new brands.”

RELATED POSTS:

• With No Apple or Amazon at CTIA, iPad Rivals Free to Sling Arrows
• Sprint, Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile CEOs Square Off in New Orleans
• Remember Carrier IQ? Well, It’s Still Around and Kicking.
• Sprint Product Exec: Launching LTE Devices Before Network Just Makes Sense
• FCC Chairman: Rejection of AT&T’s T-Mobile Deal Isn’t Causing Higher Prices
• Boingo Adds VPN and Crowdsource Hotspot Data to Its Wi-Fi Software
• T-Mobile CTO: Network Should be Ready for iPhone Users by Q4
• Interview: AT&T’s Glenn Lurie on Being the New Sheriff in Town
• Another Day, Another PayPal-esque Digital Wallet: Here’s MasterCard’s High-Tech Billfold
• CTIA Gets Down to Business in the Big Easy
• AT&T Aims to Break Into the Home-Security Business
• Interview: CTIA Boss Steve Largent Aims To Keep Conference From Being Lost in the Shuffle

This time it’s GoGo Inc., maker of GoGo Inflight Internet service, which you’ve probably used at some point if you’ve ever accessed Wi-Fi during a flight.

The company is filing for an initial public offering that could raise as much as $100 million.

GoGo’s S-1 doesn’t say how many shares it plans to sell or at what price. But it does plan to trade under the stock symbol — you guessed it — GOGO.

There are currently 1,177 commercial airplanes offering Internet access through GoGo: That’s about 85 percent of North America’s Internet-enabled commercial aircraft.

According to the filing, GoGo’s consolidated revenue increased to $113.8 million from $60.1 million, a year-over-year increase of 89.3 percent in the nine-month period ending in September. Despite increasing revenue, the company still lost $25.8 million in the first nine months of 2011.

A large portion of GoGo’s revenue comes from its customers in the business aviation market, for which it provides both broadband connectivity and satellite-based communications systems. GoGo’s business aviation arm has sold approximately 6,000 ATG and satellite-based communications systems for private planes and has signed agreements with all of the largest fractional jet operators, according to the filing.

On the the commercial side, the company cites the emergence of the “connected lifestyle” for consumers, coupled with the projected growth of the worldwide travel market, as evidence of demand for its in-flight product. In 2010, there were approximately 2.7 billion scheduled passengers on commercial aircraft worldwide, with 630 million in the U.S. According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the number of passengers worldwide is expected to grow to nearly 3 billion by 2012.

GoGo plans to expand internationally and to penetrate even more of the business aviation market, with the number of business jets in the North American and global business markets expected to grow by 8.3 percent and 16.7 percent, respectively, by 2015.

One of Gogo’s biggest risks is its dependence on partnerships with North American airline fleets for about half of its consolidated revenue. Approximately 45 percent of its commercial airline revenue — generated within a nine-month period ending September 30, 2011 — was acquired through Delta Air Lines; approximately 18 percent came via GoGo’s partnership with American Airlines, whose parent company, AMR Corp., recently filed for bankruptcy.

The company also cites as risks the increasing demand for in-flight WiFi, and the possible incapacity to meet that demand, as well as the need to keep up with rapidly advancing technologies in network infrastructure.

Low on the risk list, though still worth noting, is that in June of 2006, Gogo purchased at auction a $31 million, exclusive 10-year license for three megahertz, air-to-ground spectrum, outbidding at the time JetBlue LiveTV LLC and a company called Space Data Spectrum Holdings. GoGo expects to renew that license, but the FCC could, in the future, decide to auction additional spectrum for ATG use that is not currently designated for that purpose.

Illinois-based GoGo Inc. was originally incorporated in Texas in June of 1991 as Aircell Inc., and later became Aircell Holdings Inc. On June 15 of this year, Aircell Holdings Inc. officially changed its name to Gogo Inc.

Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, UBS, Allen & Company, Evercore Partners and William Blair & Company are listed as the underwriters on the IPO filing.

But, American Airlines insists there are a lot of benefits to using Apple’s tablets as opposed to paper. First and foremost, the iPad replaces 45 pounds worth of paper for each pilot on a plane. If American is able to use iPads on every flight — its eventual goal — it stands to reduce its fuel usage by 500,000 gallons each year.

“That’s a significant savings,” said David Clark, the American pilot that is heading up the iPad effort. For the past six months, American has been testing iPad use on 777 flights out of Los Angeles–some 300 flights in all.

As of last Friday, American has approval to use the iPads on all of its Boeing 777 aircraft for all phases of flight and Clark said the airline expects approval to use the tablets on 737s next year.

To answer every frequent flyer’s question, no, Clark isn’t really sure why the rest of us can’t use our iPads during takeoff and landing.

“I think that’s a fair and a good question,” Clark said. “First and foremost, the FAA makes the rules and we follow them.”

That being said, though, Clark notes that American Airlines did a lot of testing with the iPad and it is used only with all of its transmitting functions — including WiFi — turned off. At the back of the plane, Clark said, there can be any number of devices in use by dozens of passengers, making it hard to test for every possible scenario.

As for the pilots and their iPads, Clark said everything has gone swimmingly, Clark said. In general, even those who have never touched an iPad only need a half-hour or hour of training.

“That speaks to the operating system,” Clark said.

Nonetheless, pilots that want to carry paper manuals for a bit will be able to do so. During the six months of testing, paper backups were carried on every flight.

American also makes sure that the iPads are fully charged and properly loaded before each flight.

As to concerns that pilots will be playing games rather than reviewing flight manuals, Clark says not to worry.

“Absolutely not – no Angry Birds in flight,” he said. Indeed, there are only two apps loaded on the iPads — the customized program for reading flight charts and a PDF reader for reviewing the plane’s manual, if needed.

ZDnet reports that the airline has received Federal Aviation Administration approval to use iPads during all phases of flight and will begin doing so Friday.

While other airlines have been using the iPad on the flight deck for some time now — United, for example — American will evidently be the first to use the device throughout all phases of flight.

Except that it wasn’t much of an apology at all.

Instead, Baldwin played the role of an American Airlines captain who apologized to him.

During a Weekend Update skit with Seth Meyers, the mustached captain called Baldwin an “American treasure,” explaining that the actor was justified for refusing to stop playing Words With Friends on his phone.

“What harm was he causing to play his game?” the “captain” asked. “And not just any game, but a word game for smart people?”

Ultimately, it wasn’t the Scrabble-like game that got Baldwin booted. He also slammed a bathroom door. According to the very forgiving captain, “Words With Friends can be frustrating.”

The original saga, which played out very publicly via Baldwin’s Twitter account, provided a high-profile boost to Zynga, the game maker behind Words With Friends, which is getting ready to stage the largest Internet IPO since Google.

Here’s Baldwin’s — a.k.a. the captain’s — account of how it all went down:

Zynga, which is currently preparing to raise $1 billion in an IPO next week, acquired the popular mobile game about a year ago.

And while the social games company may have to keep mostly mute as part of its quiet period, Baldwin kept his fingers busy, updating the Twitterverse about the showdown between actor and flight attendant.

Flight attendant on American reamed me out 4 playing WORDS W FRIENDS while we sat at the gate, not moving.#nowonderamericaairisbankrupt

December 6, 2011 3:01 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@AlecBaldwin

Alec Baldwin

Baldwin, who said he was rebooked on a later flight after getting booted, garnered a lot of sympathy. American Airlines quickly tried to extinguish the flames by reaching out to him directly.

@AlecBaldwin Mr. Baldwin, we are looking into this. Please DM us contact information.

December 6, 2011 3:33 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@AmericanAir

American Airlines

Zynga couldn’t turn down the free publicity, tweeting its words of encouragement and mocking up a quick photo of a game board declaring to “let Alec play.”

Hey @AmericanAir, don’t ground @AlecBaldwin for playing. A.B.S.U.R.D. is worth *at least* 11 points in @WordsWFriends #LetAlecPlay

December 6, 2011 4:11 pm via CoTweetReplyRetweetFavorite

@zynga

Zynga

Still Baldwin’s jibes continued to flow:

My words with friends user name is now #theresalwaysunited

December 6, 2011 4:32 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@AlecBaldwin

Alec Baldwin

TMZ was on the scene, but Baldwin declined to comment on the circumstances, including why exactly he was kicked off the plane.

The two carriers have sent “cease and desist” letters in the past year to several websites that track travelers’ loyalty programs. Southwest argues the third-party sites threaten security of passenger information; American doesn’t want outsiders “scraping” data off its website.

Sites like AwardWallet, MileWise and GoMiles have been growing in popularity. You give the mileage manager account information for all your loyalty programs, usually airlines, hotels and car rentals to see, in one place, when miles are about to expire or which program is close to an award or elite-status level. Some show cash prices for a ticket as well as what a ticket would cost in miles—a comparison that requires multiple searches on an airline’s website.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Everybody wants in: The oddball start-up, substantial media companies like the New York Times, even AT&T and Amazon.

And it won’t stop there. No really, trust me, it won’t.

The next crop of companies that you may start getting offers from could include your bank, or even that hotel chain or airline you use most frequently.

This is through a nifty invention called card-linked offers, which honestly isn’t all that new at all. It works very similarly to how your credit card company offers you discounts on rental cars or hotel rooms. But now it’s becoming an ad network of sorts that can accept offers from all kinds and can take place with any brand.

I’ve written about this before, and to be sure, there’s no lack of venture-backed companies all hoping this is the next Groupon-killer. Some of the participants in the space include BillShrink, FreeMonee, Clovr Media, Offermatic and Cardlytics.

In this case, I talked to Lexington, Mass.-based Cartera Commerce.

The company, which has 165 employees and has raised $30 million, is announcing a partnership today with InterContinental Hotels Group to allow hotel guests to earn rewards points while doing everyday shopping.

If users link a credit card to IHG’s loyalty program and make purchases at participating retailers with that card, they will earn points that can be redeemed at such InterContinental Hotel brands as Holiday Inn, Hotel Indigo and Crowne Plaza.

The Aite Group estimates that by 2015, 460 million consumers will have signed up for incentive programs such as these, totaling about $1.7 billion in annual revenue for card issuers.

Tom Beecher, Cartera’s president and CEO, walks me through a PowerPoint presentation, comparing how it is better than Groupon’s business, and how it compares with Google.

On one side of the equation, he explains, there are the publishers, and on the other side there are advertisers and brands. That’s sort of like Google’s AdWords and AdSense.

In the same way, Cartera works with advertisers and also the banks, airlines, hotel chains, or other similar services that have access to the consumer. Some of its customers include Chase, Wells Fargo, American Airlines, Best Buy and USAA.

Because consumers link a credit card to these offers, these are considered very well-targeted ads. Cartera is able to collect information at the aggregate level to find out about spending habits. Advertisers can selectively make offers to consumers who shop at their competitors, but not current customers who already visit regularly. That helps retailers acquire new customers and not just give discounts to already loyal patrons.

So far, Cartera says it has processed $1 billion in transactions on its platform, and is seeing conversion rates from 20 to 40 percent.

Even though these offers are not as well recognized as Groupon, they are typically easier to redeem.

The offers don’t need to be purchased in advance or printed out. Consumers automatically get the discount when they use the same credit card that received the offer. The offers can appear in a number of formats, from a Web site to an email or a line item within their bank statement.

Photo Credit: Images_of_Money.

The suit, filed Monday, is the latest move in a protracted battle between American Air parent AMR Corp., online travel agencies and the electronic ticket sellers known as global distribution systems, or GDS.

AMR removed its flights from Orbitz at the end of last year as part of a broader dispute with Travelport, a private equity-controlled company that owns the second-largest U.S. online travel agent as well as three GDS operations.

Read the rest of this post on the original

A new feature called “Price Predictor” auto-suggests flights and prices right from the search box, according to a Bing blog post today.

As soon as you start typing “Seattle to JFK,” a menu drops down, telling you the best price, and if you should buy now because prices are going up, or if you can hold off for a better fare.

The menu drops down before you ever hit the enter key. The results are for the best flight price over the next 90 days.

Other key words that will trigger the menu include: “Fly to Chicago,” or even “Chicago Flights.” Bing will immediately recognize where you are and instantaneously display the “Price Predictor” based on your location.

To cull this price information, Bing uses ITA Software’s data.

Google is currently in the process of trying to acquire ITA for $700 million, a process that is now being reviewed by the Justice Department for its antitrust ramifications.

ITA Software maintains a database of flight information, including fare comparisons and flight schedules for many major U.S. airlines, including American and United Airlines. Companies such as Microsoft and Kayak.com, which use the data, are opposing the merger because they claim it will stifle competition.

Others, such as Expedia.com, are also opposed to the deal even though they do not rely on data from ITA. The American Antitrust Institute also recently spoke out against it, calling it a “unregulatable monopoly.”

There are two main issues. First, the companies that do rely on the data are concerned Google will not honor its contracts over the long-term, and second, they are afraid Google might become a competitor, even though it promises not to get into the business of selling tickets.

For now, Google is not even licensing data from ITA.

When conducting a similar search of “Seattle to JFK” on Google, there’s no helpful information in the drop down menu. When you hit enter, there’s a widget that lets you choose dates for your travel and where you want results from, such as Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline, Kayak and others.

But unlike Bing, there are no instant results on the best prices anywhere.

In a FAQ on Google’s site about the merger, it writes: “By combining ITA Software’s expertise with Google’s technology, we will be able to build new flight search tools for users that will make it easier for them to search for flights, compare flight options and prices, and get them quickly to sites where they can buy their tickets.”

ITA Software maintains a database of flight information, including fare comparison and flight schedules, for many major U.S. airlines, including American and United Airlines. Companies such as Kayak.com and Expedia.com are opposing the merger because they claim it will stifle competition.

Google maintains that it is only trying to improve travel-related search since it is among its highest-volume queries. Its goal will be to refer people quickly to a site where they can actually purchase flights–and it doesn’t have plans to sell flights itself, according to a site that answers questions about the deal.

But the American Antitrust Institute’s concerns are more complex than whether Google is buying ITA to compete with online travel agencies.

It says the merger warrants a deep look because a deal of this nature will strain the boundaries of antitrust analysis and raise First Amendment questions as the government participates in decisions about the prioritization of information reaching the public.

In a release today, the non-profit explains: “Maintaining competitive markets for both general and niche search may be the only alternative, ultimately, to an unregulatable monopoly. It is therefore appropriate for the Division, employing a statute intended to stop monopoly in its incipiency, to work within a public vision of longer-term developments and to place the present acquisition within such a context.”

It’s not the first group to come out against the deal. FairSearch.org has been particularly active, and Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster, who chairs the antitrust committee of the National Association of Attorneys General, questions whether the deal would hamper competition in the online travel market.

FairSearch.org produced this video to explain why a merger should not take place:

Google Buys ITA – A Travel Story from FairSearch.org on Vimeo.

And here’s a video from Google:

Usablenet, a company that powers the mobile Web sites of various airlines, hotel chains and Amtrak, said that traffic to its travel-related sites was up 200 percent over the past two days.

Also of note, Usablenet said the most traffic came from iPhones and Android devices, marking the first time that more business travelers were using Android-powered phones than were on BlackBerry devices.

“As travelers away from home are searching for the most up-to-date information regarding their itineraries, many of them are depending on mobile websites,” Usablenet President Nick Taylor said in a statement. The company’s clients include American Airlines, British Airways, Delta, JetBlue, US Airways and Amtrak, as well as the Hilton, Omni, Starwood and Wyndham hotel chains.

Meanwhile, those who have managed to stay high and dry have been enjoying some schadenfreude with time-lapse blizzard videos, such as this one.

December 2010 Blizzard Timelapse from Michael Black on Vimeo.

Provided by Aircell, the service will cost laptop users $9.95 for flights of less than three hours and $12.95 for longer flights. Travelers using Internet-ready handsets will pay $7.95 regardless of the length of their flight. And make no mistake, the data show they will pay. Apparently, $10 is a pittance for distraction when you’re trapped in a center seat on a packed flight with “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” as your only in-flight entertainment.

“[People are] working, they’re doing their e-mail, they’re going into their corporate networks, they’re going to their Facebook page, they’re Twittering, they’re doing YouTube and other video sites, but they’re in fact doing more of it,” Aircell CEO Jack Blumenstein told the Dallas Morning News. “The data shows that people use almost twice as much of data during the course of a session and stay on almost twice as long as when they’re at a hotel or a hotspot on the ground. People clearly are engaged by it when they’re flying.”

[Image credit: Flickr/Bekathwia]

Provided by Aircell, the service will cost laptop users $9.95 for flights of less than three hours and $12.95 for longer flights. Travelers using Internet-ready handsets will pay $7.95 regardless of the length of their flight. And make no mistake, the data show they will pay. Apparently, $10 is a pittance for distraction when you’re trapped in a center seat on a packed flight with “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” as your only in-flight entertainment.

“[People are] working, they’re doing their e-mail, they’re going into their corporate networks, they’re going to their Facebook page, they’re Twittering, they’re doing YouTube and other video sites, but they’re in fact doing more of it,” Aircell CEO Jack Blumenstein told the Dallas Morning News. “The data shows that people use almost twice as much of data during the course of a session and stay on almost twice as long as when they’re at a hotel or a hotspot on the ground. People clearly are engaged by it when they’re flying.”

[Image credit: Flickr/Bekathwia]

“We’ve heard a lot of complaints from flight attendants and passengers,” union spokesman David Roscow told Bloomberg, though he didn’t offer up any actual incidents as proof. Which isn’t all that surprising, really. After all, travelers have been able to bring pornography on flights for as long as there have been commercial airlines. For crying out loud, airport gift shops and newsstands sell porn. But it’s rarely a problem in-flight because … well, who wants to be the creepy porn guy in seat 21A? And if you don’t mind being that guy and your presence troubles other passengers, your airline obviously have ways of managing that. Said American Airlines (AMR) spokesperson Tim Smith:

Our policy is to provide Wi-Fi capabilities the way customers are most familiar using [them] at home, office, coffee shops and on the road–with unfiltered connections that allow customers to get what they need, when they need it. While it does provide a new access point for information and content, customers viewing inappropriate material on-board a flight is not a new scenario for our crews who have always managed this issue with great success.”