Gogo's Problem: Inflight Wi-Fi Is Expensive, and No One Uses It

Fasten your seatbelts. The public offering for Gogo, the largest U.S. provider of inflight Wi-Fi, is giving investors a chance to prepare for plenty of turbulence (and aviation clichés) as its business faces an array of punishing headwinds. The company raised $187 million selling shares at $17 each on Friday. The price has since fallen about 15 percent.

The immediate problem for Gogo is that most travelers don’t pay for Wi-Fi access when they fly. Only about 6 percent of fliers on Gogo-enabled flights used the service in the first quarter, the company says. So it raised its prices, looking for profit from a smaller base of business travelers who can pass that cost along to their employers. Surfing the Web at 38,000 feet is now a premium product.