For all the annoyance of being crammed into an aluminum tube at 35,000 feet with a bunch of strangers, air travel has offered one benefit: the ability to tell bosses and colleagues, “I’ll be on a flight, so you won’t be able to reach me.” So much for that excuse.Wireless Internet service is starting to spread among airlines in the United States — Delta and American have installed it on more than a dozen planes each, and several other carriers are planning to test it.For the airlines, always desperate for new sources of revenue, offering the service — about $10 for three hours and more for longer flights — was an easy call. And many passengers will cheer the development as an end to Web withdrawal.But this new frill is hardly as benign as a bag of pretzels. It may be a new source of tension between passengers on packed planes. A flight attendants’ union has even expressed concern that terrorists could use it to plot attacks.And there is the inescapable fact that one of the last places on earth to get away from it all can now be turned into a mobile office.

Brent Bigler, a financial planner living in Los Angeles, said he paid the $12.95 fee on a recent American Airlines flight to New York, and spent several hours reading e-mail and searching the Internet. When his plane was delayed, he was able to reach a friend to say he would be late for dinner.

Even so, Mr. Bigler said he worried about the downside.

“This could be the same thing as what happened with cellphones and BlackBerrys,” he said. “Once it’s cheap and ubiquitous, employers might expect employees to participate. I may feel guilty if it were a Monday and I napped or read and didn’t use the Internet to do work.”
More At; http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20090207/ZNYT01/902073014/-1/sports05?Title=Not_Everyone_Is_Cheering_as_Wi_Fi_Takes_to_the_Air