Next Tuesday, JetBlue, with Flight 641 from New York to San Francisco, will become the first U.S. airline to offer free, in-flight e-mail and instant messaging to its passengers.

From The Wall Street Journal:

JetBlue passengers on the test aircraft who have Wi-Fi-enabled laptops and Yahoo Mail or Yahoo Messenger accounts will be able to send emails and instant messages to friends on the ground and receive messages back from those friends. Passengers who have new Wi-Fi-enabled BlackBerry smartphones will be able to access their BlackBerry email and instant messages. Initially, Research in Motion’s BlackBerry 8820 model and BlackBerry Curve 8320 model will be able to support the JetBlue system.

JetBlue says there should be plenty of bandwidth, since it’s unlikely every passenger will be sending e-mail simultaneously, and other carriers seem to be mulling their own plans. One thing holding the other carriers back is uncertainty over how much to charge for the service.

Hopefully JetBlue will set the standard with its free service.

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