As part of the alliance, Lycos, Inc. has acquired a 10-percent stake in Inflightonline.

Inflightonline will offer intranet and Internet access with Lycos content and services, including access to LYCOShop, the Internet's most complete shopping destination. Other services will include e-mail capability, hotel/car/flight reservation services, audio/video on-demand, as well as news, weather, sports, financial information and a large assortment of reference/research material. The system will be able to carry more than one million Web pages.

"Lycos is the first portal to have an in-flight ISP agreement and this service arena offers a tremendous market opportunity," said Jeff Crown, vice president of corporate development at Lycos (LCOS).

"With Lycos' strength as a leading portal on the World Wide Web and the reach of existing in-flight telephony systems, Inflightonline plans to set the standard for in-flight computing, e-commerce and communication services," said Robert Iversen, CEO of Inflightonline.

Inflightonline is currently in negotiations with three domestic airlines and plans to begin service as soon as April.