Back in the day, before I entered into the wide, wide world of journalism, I was a jacket-and-tie corporate consultant. For 15 years, in fact, out of the 30 I spent in medical devices and biotech. As such, I did a lot of traveling. At one point, while managing the sale of a product and setup of the acquring company's manufacturing, I was flying from Denver to Baltimore every other Monday, and I was part of a group of four jacket-and-tie types who had met in a breakfast joint in the Denver airport and proceeded to meet, all four of us, for breakfast every other Monday for about a year.

Good times. In those days, of course, if an airplane had wi-fi at all, it was costly and unreliable, a state of affairs that persists to this day. But that may be changing; my airline of choice, United Airlines (hey, I have lifetime Premiere status), will soon be premiering (hah) free Starlink internet on its airliners.

United Airlines passengers will be able to experience free in-flight Wi-Fi as soon as May through Elon Musk’s broadband satellite service Starlink.

The Chicago-based airline announced on Monday that the FAA has approved its first Starlink-equipped aircraft and that its first commercial flight has been scheduled for May, just eight months after striking the deal with the SpaceX subsidiary.

United's first commercial passengers to experience the new technology will be onboard a United Express Embraer 175, according to a media release from the airline.

"We know customers are going to love this experience, and we think it will give them yet another reason to choose United," Grant Milstead, United Vice President of Digital Technology, said in a statement. "We're working closely with Starlink and the FAA to finish installs on our regional fleet this year and bring the best inflight experience in the sky to more and more people."

I don't travel nearly as much as I did in my corporate days, but my wife and I go down to the lower 48 every so often to visit family, and this may well be a nice feature to have. It will allow me to write an article or two, or just surf the internet with a (one would hope) faster, more reliable connection. It would be efficient, and if you're going to be anything, you should be efficient.

But, as should come as a surprise to no one, I have some concerns.

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First: Please, please, please, please tell me it won't permit cell phone use through wi-fi calling or any other means. Other than at home, it seems the only place we're spared from listening to other people's personal conversations is when we're stuck in an aluminum can shooting through the air at 500mph, 36,000 feet above the ground - a time when we can't walk away - and I'd prefer it to stay that way. I can all-too-easily imagine being stuck in a seat next to one of those cretins who has to put their phone on speaker and shout at it.

Second: The airlines will, of course, have to more strictly enforce a headphone/earbud rule, so I don't have to hear the kid behind me playing World of Warcraft on his laptop for the whole flight.

Third: Will this work on international flights? The current setup only works, as I understand it, over U.S. territory - I know it cuts out over Canada.

This is kind of a neat deal, and it's a draw for United, which means that the rest of the airlines will scramble to catch up. The world's airways may be getting a lot more productive.

Editor's Note: President Trump is leading America into the "Golden Age" as Democrats try desperately to stop it.

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