I’m always happy to see a sign like this one on my recent JetBlue flight to New York (Photo: Chris McGinnis)
I’m addicted to inflight wi-fi and my ticket purchase decision is nearly always dependent on wi-fi availability onboard. That’s probably because I run an online business and being offline for long periods can have significant consequences.
But it’s not just me. I’ve noticed a big increase in the number of passengers onboard accessing wi-fi from their laptops, smart phones and tablets– and that’s part of the problem. Too many passengers accessing wi-fi at the same time slows down connection speeds.
Technology is barely keeping up with the demand for inflight wi-fi, but we’ve seen progress with the newer, faster satellite-based systems on United and JetBlue. Gogo has rolled out its faster ATG-4 air-to-ground system fleetwide on Virgin America, and its showing up on more Delta flights.
But even with those improvements, connections can be slow. Painfully slow. Especially when flying over desolate areas of the Rocky Mountains on a plane full of internet-hungry techies on a flight between New York and San Francisco.
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Slowly but surely things will get better. And wi-fi in the sky will only become more ubiquitous. For a look at the current state of inflight wifi, airline booking site RouteHappy.com has produced an interesting report named “The Global State of Inflight Wi-Fi” which ranks inflight wi-fi by carrier.
Here are some interesting snippets:
On which airlines are you MOST likely to find inflight wi-fi? Based on the chart above, it’s Virgin America, Southwest and JetBlue. What’s best about Virgin here is that you know you are going to get inflight wi-fi every single time you get on a plane. No other airline can match that right now.
It’s important to point out that Virgin America is a small carrier with a tiny fleet compared to major airlines. So look above and see how airlines rank based on number of flights with wi-fi, and you see that Delta and Southwest lead…big time.
Availability of inflight wi-fi is huge…but increasingly important is having enough power to stay connected on long flights. Wi-fi is a huge drain on device batteries, so Routehappy took a look at which airlines offer the best access to in-seat power. Virgin America and Alaska lead in this category (see above), which is important because a large percentage of their flights are long-haul where in-seat power is essential. On the other hand, Southwest, which offers mostly short haul flights, offers no in-seat power at all. Lack of in-seat power is a big drawback for JetBlue since many of it’s flights are long haul transcon or NE to Florida flights– but it is working on adding more power.
We are lucky in the US because we were the first to enjoy widespread access to inflight wi-fi while the rest of the frequent flying world looked on with envy. That’s starting to change now as international carriers rapidly adding new satellite based systems for over water flights.
From Delta regarding international wifi progress
Among US carriers, Delta has about 37% of its international fleet outfitted with wi-fi— primarily on its 747s and A330s but coverage is sparse on its much larger fleet of 777s and 767s. United has wi-fi on all its 747s and about half of its 777s but only a handful of its new 787 Dreamliners. It’s only on two of United’s 767s. On American, only its new 777-300ER and select 777-200 planes are equipped with wi-fi.
Thanks to Routehappy.com for providing this information! Click here for the full infographic.
How do YOU feel about the state of inflight wi-fi? Are you an addict? Happy or frustrated with the service… and the pricing? Please leave your comments below!
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Good point, Greg! Thanks! I’m always taken aback by the folks who don’t understand why they can’t watch youtube videos inflight ;/ — chris
I fly mostly on Delta, a little over 100,000 miles a year, and I’ve found it is important to turn off apps that are using bandwidth in the background. By pausing syncing on Crashplan, BackBlaze, Dropbox, Evernote, Box, ShareFile or other cloud services you can get much better performance. Doing so takes the service from almost useless to somewhat usable. I’m able to surf most websites, download small files and use email without many issues. I’ve always wondered how much the service would improve if everyone on the plane paused their cloud based services as well. It requires a bit of technical knowledge and therefore it would be difficult for it to happen.
I have wasted money logging on and then being stuck because wifi is so slow on Delta flights, which is about all that I fly. Would love to see upgrades. Also, prices are too high and not predictable.
It seems that most of AA’s older jets used for international flights (especially 757/767) don’t have Wi-Fi. This can be problematic when those same birds fly domestically, especially hub-to-hub.
All I can say, do we really, really need WiFi on airplanes??? I would have to think that for two, three or four hours we can go without instead of getting frustrating slow WiFi. Unfortunately I can understand that the thought that you can just relax on a plane isn’t an option with tight seating and uncomfortable flights, but come on we can’t go one stupid flight without WiFi????
I wish they had looked at the quality of the WiFi service. I would estimate that GoGo on Delta is not worth even trying to log on to 85% of the time due to extremely slow connections. 5% of the time connections do not happen. 10% of the time the service is adequate. Admittedly, this is only based on my experiences flying about 130,000 miles with Delta in 2014. Of my twelve over the water international segments on Delta in 2014 (mostly 777s but a couple of 747s), none of my flights had international WiFi.
I’ve tried WiFi on both Southwest and United, and both times I was ready to pull my hair out with frustration. Mostly unusable but very occasionally I could get out a 1-line email. Pages took minutes, not seconds, to load, and with all the advertising junk that rides along on news sites it was really not worth the effort. I like the free Dish Network TV on WiFi-enabled Southwest flights, though… wonder if they still offer that.
The above stats are very interesting. I would be curious to see the breakdown between AA and US as most AA flights have wifi. So I suspect that the average is brought down by US.