Why won't Jeff Smisek put Wifi on United Planes?

Warning, Rant coming. I missed watching Game 7 of the NBA finals.

I just do not understand why United does not broadly add wifi to its fleet. I just flew back on United Flight 1532 from Newark to SFO. Idiotically, I chose to fly at the exact time of Game 7 of the NBA finals.

But wait, before you label be as a lunatic, I did check to see if  DirectTV would be on this flight. Turns out that it did have DirectTV, so I figured I would be good. Full day of work in New York, race to airport, watch game, back at office in San Francisco for Friday morning company meeting. What could be simpler?

As I got on plane, the flight attendant was excitedly announcing how we would be able to watch the game on the DirectTV systems on United. For the low price of $7.99 we could all sign up. The fact that Jetblue has had this service for 14 years and does offer it free of charge, did not seem to dampen the enthusiasm of the DirecTV pimping.

But alas, the game was not available on the flight!!!! For some unexplained reason the airlines version of DirectTV does not carry ABC! It has just about every other channel, but one of the three major networks is somehow excluded from the service that airlines offer. I was able to watch a 2012 Michigan- Penn State football replay. Excellent consolation prize! Big Ten football between a down year Wolverine squad a team on probation. L

And because Jeff Smisek refuses to make put wifi on his planes, there was no way we could watch the game. If he had wifi, I could have used my slingbox app to the watch the game. If the connection was too thin, we could have used out NBA Mobile Apps to listen to the game on radio and use their gamecast application to follow closely. But no, we were forced to get updates from the captain like we lived in the stoneage.

So, this is just the final straw for me on United. I actually flew on a flight with Jeff Smisek about 9 months ago and I asked him about this. He told be he was waiting to get better technology and faster wifi and that I should just wait. Really, Jeff! Really, I should wait! I know lots of silicon valley frequent flyers who purposely avoid United because its really hard to do productive work without connectivity. But United seems not to care! I just do not understand. I am sure Jeff has lots of very difficult challenges and decisions to make in a tough situation, but this one seems like a no brainer.

Jeff, are you listening?  Do you know how often there is a Game 7 in the NBA finals? About once every 7 years!

Put wifi only your planes! Until then this customer is going elsewhere.