Update on JAL SKY SUITE 777 and JAL SKY Wi-Fi rollout schedule

JAL originally scheduled to rollout daily SS7 service on the Tokyo Narita (NRT) - Paris (CDG) on August 23 2013. But it is once again ahead of the original schedule and therefore the new rollout date is now August 15 2013.  This probably means this is the end of the old W73 configuration with the JAL SKYSLEEPER SOLO seat.

Although JAL has not announced the exact rollout date of SS7 on the Los Angeles and Chicago routes, the seat map for flights have been loaded on certain dates. For the Los Angeles route, flights from December 1 2013 are showing the new SS7 configuration. For Chicago route, flights from March 1 2014 are showing the new configuration as well. This doesn't mean these will be the rollout dates. It only means JAL is confident enough SS7 service will turn daily form those dates and we should expect to see SS7 service on these routes before these dates. Especially for the Chicago route, we should start seeing SS7 service on alternate dates when it is first rolled out in January 2014.

Up until now, JAL has only rolled out daily JAL SKY Wi-Fi service on flights between Tokyo Narita and New York JFK, Chicago, Los Angeles, Jakarta, Frankfurt and London Heathrow. Although SS7 has been serving the Paris route on alternate dates, JAL SKY Wi-Fi service was not unavailable. But JAL will finally roll out JAL SKY Wi-Fi service on the flights between Tokyo Narita and Paris on alternate dates from August 16 2013. The current schedule shows this will be the case at least until end of September.

As explained before, JAL has not installed the wi-fi equipments on at least one of the retrofitted SS7 (JA734J). This is why JAL SKY Wi-Fi service isn't available on the Paris route up until August 16. The longer gap between the daily SS7 rollout on the Paris route and Los Angeles routes could probably explained by this too. My guess is that JAL will probably retrofit another plane then install the wi-fi equipments to be used on the Paris route. Then it add the equipment on JL734J, which would roughly take a month plane.