Think you know what a Gogo inflight Internet session is going to cost? You might be surprised at the number of different prices the company charges, even for the exact same offering.
Gogo employs various tracking systems at its Itasca, Illinois headquarters. Among them is Gogo’s real-time signups for the day, including pricing for the different products. Suffice it to say that there are many different price points on offer at any given time.
It makes some sense that the individual flight pass options will vary in price; we saw a range from $9.95-26.95 during a recent tour of Gogo’s offices. After all, flight durations vary as well.
Gogo’s pricing is dynamic
For other products, however, the cost variations were more interesting. An all-day pass can range in price from $16.95 to $30.95, for example, while the “Buy 60 minutes, get 30 free!” package ranged from $6-$15. The “Buy 2 Hours, get 1 free!” had a similar 250% range, from $10-$25. The charts did not show how many passengers were offered each price point, just the number of purchases made.
Frequent flyers are noticing the different price points. In a FaceBook post last week, long-time aviation journalist Holly Hegeman noted that she had “just experienced the new American Airlines/US Airways Gogo sign-on portal for the first time. No problems. Speed? Excellent. Download is clocked at 2.24 mbps. $9 for an hour.”
Travel analyst Henry Harteveldt responded, “I like all of this except the $9 an hour part.”
It should come as no surprise that Gogo is experimenting with pricing on its service; maximizing revenue means figuring out what various passengers are willing to pay for service. And the company has enough data in its systems to determine at what price point each user is willing to complete the transaction. Not only can Gogo trace purchases by your account with them but they can also track based on cookies or even the hardware address of the device. This could allow advanced behavior like starting out at one price point and altering the offer over time.
And, in the meantime, customers won’t really know what the going rate is until they get on board. See snaps of Gogo’s tracking in action below.
