American Airlines is starting to offer Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 units to its first class passengers as an entertainment option during several flights, Mashable is reporting. Apparently the tablet will be an option on flights between Los Angeles and New York, San Francisco and New York, Los Angeles and Miami, Boston and Los Angeles flights operated by 757s, and a few European and South American flights operated by American Airlines’ 767-300 aircraft. 6,000 tablets are being deployed in total, and American Airlines will offer passengers access to Wi-Fi during the trip. Hopefully AA at least loads the Tabs up with a few movies and some tunes, too.

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Now is most definitely not a good time to run a US (or any) airline. People are traveling less, the economy is basically in the toilet and fuel is incredibly expensive which means that everything else is more expensive. On top of everything else we just entered a historically slow time of the year in terms of air travel as summer draws to a close and kids return to school. We’re not sure how far this tactic will go, but JetBlue is trying to ease the pain a bit by auctioning off a handful of flights on eBay. This doesn’t mark the first time an airline has turned to eBay but in the past, official eBay ticket auctions have been used to raise money for charity. JetBlue apparently isn’t quite concerned with humanitarianism at the moment as the airline has listed over 300 round-trip packages including single tickets, two-ticket packages and even a few mystery auctions that include hotel stays. All auctions were listed last night with varying durations and with opening prices of between 5¢ and 10¢. The auctions are expected to close between 85% and 90% of retail value, which means that travelers will indeed get a nice discount. To those interested, all flights depart on a Thursday or Friday and return on a Sunday or Monday. Travel resulting from the auctioned tickets must be completed by October 6th.

[Via ABC]

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