An air-to-ground communication system including: a plurality of ground stations, where each ground station includes a plurality of ground-based directional antennae having a beam width associated with a particular area of the sky above the ground station and for each ground-based directional antenna, a least one software defined radio coupled to the directional antenna to enable the ground-based directional antenna to transmit radio frequency signals generated by the software defined radio and to provide to the software defined radio frequency signals received by the ground-based directional antenna and a plurality of air stations, each including a number of air-based directional antennae and an air station control unit, each air-based directional antenna having a beam width associated with a particular area of the sky below the air station; for each air-based directional antenna, a least one software defined radio coupled to the air-based directional antenna in such a manner as enable the air-based directional antenna to transmit radio frequency signals generated by the software defined radio and to provide to the software defined radio frequency signals received by the air-based directional antenna; wherein the control unit of each air station is configured to enable bi-directional communications between each air-based directional antenna a ground-based directional antenna, at any given time, the ground-based directional antennas in communication with the air-based directional antenna are all from different ground stations.