I’m just now catching up with what’s going on with a number of airlines, so I’m using them for the inaugural “goodhop – badhop”.  A rundown of things we like and dislike about recent modhop-relevant announcements from airlines, hotel chains, etc.

[goodhop]: Continental Airlines is rapidly growing thier number of planes with live in-flight TV. In doing so, They join the ranks of Jet Blue, Virgin America, Delta and Frontier in the flying TV market. A whopping 95 channels of DirecTV programming (that’s 59 more channels than Jet Blue) are offered on equipt flights. The catch? Yep, there’s a charge. For $6, all channels are available from the time you sit down until you pull into the gate at your destination. Even for $6 we like this option, particularly on flights over 2 hours. You can check the progress of Continental’s DirecTV equipt fleet here.

[badhop]: UK based Thomas Cook Airlines joins EasyJet and others in offering Sony PSP portables to replace their unpopular in-flight entertainment equipment. The charge to rent the PSPs is £7.50 and £5.00 for a headphone splitter if you’d like to share. We’re not sure if this is a good replacement for all travelers. Irelands Ryanair tried a similar program with little success before scrapping it. Not terribly bad, but we’re underwhelmed.

[goodhop]: Australia’s JetStar Airways will soon begin in flight rentals of Apples popular iPad. Loaded with movies, games and other time killers, the device will be available for about $10 on domestic flights over 90 minutes. While it has yet to be tested, we think the iPads good screen size, easy interface and light weight could make this a good option. (…and we’re PCs!)