I’ll admit it, I’m jealous. Jealous of anyone flying with Virgin America. This week, the airline celebrated the news that its entire fleet had been fitted with wi-fi by having a live Skype link-up between chat show host Oprah Winfrey and Virgin America flight crew member Mandalay Roberts. The airline has thus become the first with universal onboard wi-fi.

A few weeks ago, another US domestic airline said it too was installing wi-fi on its entire fleet. Low-cost business carrier AirTran, which operates many of its flights from a hub at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport, said it would have it across its network by this summer.

Meanwhile, Delta has announced it is halfway through equipping its 300-plane domestic flight with wi-fi and expects to have a fleet of 500 wifi-equipped planes, including those coming through the Northwest Airlines merger, by the end of next year.

All these carriers use Aircell’s Gogo system, which costs $7.95 for handheld devices, $9.95 for flights less than three hours and $12.95 for longer flights.

American Airlines was the first US airline to offer Gogo last August and in March announced it would extend the trial to 300 planes over the next three years. Other US airlines are also looking at inflight wi-fi.

By 2011, wi-fi access will be expected by US domestic passengers.

So what about Europe then? Ever since the failure of Connexion, Boeing’s in-flight wi-fi service, and its disappearance from Lufthansa flights, no European carrier has offered wi-fi to its passengers.

BA will dip its toe in with mobile data services on its new business class only service from London City to New York JFK this autumn but it’s not wi-fi and it’s just two flights a day.

With the current state of the economy and the big losses being posted by European airlines, it is hard to see how many carriers could justify the capital expenditure. Except Ryanair perhaps. And that’s why I’m jealous.