The airline announced a partnership with Google on Thursday that will make Chromebooks available for testing on select flights.
Passengers who are flying on Virgin America between the airline's home airport in San Francisco and either Boston, Chicago O'Hare or Dallas airports between July 1 and September 30 will be able to check out a laptop at their gates. During their flights, they can test it using a free in-air WiFi pass.
Virgin America recently named a plane with a Twitter hashtag, partnered with Foursquare for an in-flight game, and ran several promotions that trade checkins on location-based services for rewards like plane tickets and frequent flyer points. Its latest technologically hip promotion does not come as much of a surprise.
The deal makes sense for Google, too.
Samsung's Chromebook hit select online stores in June. The computer runs Google's Chrome OS and is optimized for web-based tasks and apps. It's not a Mac, and it's not a Windows computer, which means most consumers aren't even aware it's an option.