Skype calls may be officially verboten onboard American Airlines' new Gogo inflight Internet service, which went live on Aug. 20. But some people have been snatching short bits of conversation above 10,000 feet, before Gogo sniffs them out and says Nono.

But here's some good news for Gogo users: it turns out it's possible to Skype chat on flights between New York City and San Francisco and Los Angeles and Miami. The service costs $13 for three hours.

CrunchGear reports it was able to sneak in five-second conversations on Skype.

That's enough to say hell-o, meet me and good-bye anyway.

CrunchGear said: "I just spoke with Jack Blumenstein, the president and ceo of Aircell (the Itasca, Ill. developer of the service). They've restricted the packets that enable voip calls but clearly haven't blocked Skype altogether. Connections can be made that may or may not last a few seconds but the audio then becomes garbled."

The Dallas Morning News reported greater success:
"John Happ, Aircell's EVP of airlines stopped by a few minutes ago to see how I thought the system was working.

"We chatted about Skype. To clarify-- you can do text-base Skype stuff. He said he had several chat sessions going at once and was pretty excited about it.

"He was interested in the fact that my seatmate was able to get on, albeit briefly.

"He said the system has a 'sniffer' in it to keep folks from using Skype's voice and video function for more than a few seconds at a time.

"Mr. 22J was able to get on for a minute or two- not long enough for much conversation -- but certainly more than a few seconds."

Skype blessed Gogo: "We are all for bringing more internet access to people wherever and whenever, including when they are in-flight. So we are happy to hear about American Airlines' efforts to bring in-flight broadband to their customers.

"The possible usage of Skype in-flight is very exciting to us, and anecdotally we are already hearing about people using Skype to communicate while flying," said Jennifer Caukin, spokeswoman for Skype.

The idea will be spreading. Delta and Virgin America also will be offering the service. Southwest, Jet Blue and Air Alaska may be getting on board with Internet service inflight as well.

Aircell told Skype in the US back in April that the main reason Skype in the sky was not being permitted was out of consideration for passengers who want peace and quiet. Still, air phones aren't really a new idea.

Let's keep our fingers crossed that the airlines eventually will allow us to Skype inflight. Come on guys, you can only do Facebook for so long.

Let me float an idea: How about Skyping and non-Skyping sections onboard?