Picked up from Macworld:

Launched four years ago, the use of Wi-Fi on U.S. airlines has yet to catch on, with estimates that the wireless technology is still used by only 7 percent of the flying public.

There are a number of reasons: With Wi-Fi cropping up for free in many airports and public locations, passengers don’t want to fork over as much as $10 for a flight of a few hours. Passengers also may not know when Wi-Fi is available on a flight since the airlines provide the wireless service on only a small percentage of their planes.

Having just gotten off a flight where I was gaming the system to determine whether I’d want wifi, I have a few perspectives on this.

There’s no question that wifi would be a no-brainer for handheld devices at the right price point. Regardless of whether you view a flight as uninterrupted work time or uninterrupted leisure time, I doubt anyone except the “thank God I’m unreachable” crowd wouldn’t see value in connecting to Facebook, Twitter, and email from the air. I thought it was truly nifty to use Flightstats as an in-air GPS telling me where I was midflight, and being able to tap my flight number into Google for minute-to-minute updates on arrival time and gate was especially useful for planning my connections.

Still, the main issue for wifi uptake is the horrible ergonomics in coach. This is where you both have people who are trying to make maximum use of their 21 inches of space, and the people whose in-flight expenses probably aren’t paid for by their businesses. You will probably see this ameliorated somewhat–with a corresponding upswing in wifi usage–as more people use iPads as work machines and don’t need the full space a laptop requires. But until an airline figures out how to make flying more comfortable, then you’re less likely to see widespread uptake of in-flight Internet.

Beyond that, price sensitivity is the main issue. On my last flights, Gogo was $8 for a single flight and single device, or $13 for a day pass that I could use on any device, one at a time. It jumps to $40 for a monthly pass–which means, obviously, that if it’s the beginning of the month and you’re flying more than two roundtrips, it starts to get cheaper. I suspect that the 7% correlates to people who are on airplanes more than once a week. Gogo needs to start looking at the economics of App Store pricing if they want market penetration; drop your prices significantly, and the new users are likely to be low-bandwidth users compared to the early adopters… plus you’ll start locking in more casual flyers who will see in-flight wifi as a casual expense, similar to the need to buy a sandwich before boarding a flight.