TravelSkills

News and Tips For Your Trips

Some elite flyers to get free wi-fi

Air Canada is adding free Wi-Fi as a perk for its elites. (Image: Air Canada)

Is this becoming a trend? Another big North American carrier said it will offer free in-flight Wi-Fi service as a perk for its most frequent customers.

Air Canada and Gogo announced that free Internet is being added as one of the privileges that can be selected by the airline’s Altitude Elite 75K and Super Elite 100K elite members – the top two levels of the airline’s five-tier elite structure.

The Elite 75Ks can get six-month unlimited use passes for Wi-Fi, and the Super Elite 100Ks can select a 12-month free pass. The passes are good on mainline Air Canada flights in North America as well as Air Canada Express and Air Canada Rouge.

And soon, the benefit is coming to international flights as well.

“Air Canada’s new Altitude WiFi select privilege is available for use on all Air Canada equipped flights, all over the world, regardless of systems provider. This also includes Air Canada Rouge and Air Canada Express operated flights,” Mark Nasr, Vice President Loyalty & eCommerce for Air Canada told TravelSkills.
He added, “Currently all of our Airbus 320 family, Embraer E175/E190, and Boeing 737MAX aircraft offer connectivity, using a mix of GoGo and Thales solutions—that’s about 160 planes. We began installations of the latest generation high-speed connectivity on our wide-body fleet this quarter; we’ll start rolling-out those planes by January at the rate of one aircraft everyone one to two weeks, until the fleet is complete. We expect to have a 10 long-haul aircraft complete before year’s end; this time next year, we expect to offer connectivity on around 248 aircraft, including 80 (or most of) the long-haul fleet.”

For now, Air Canada charges US$16 for a Gogo one-way pass if purchased online before flying. A monthly pass is US$52.

Qualifying members will be able to pick the free Wi-Fi as a Select Privilege benefit for 2018. Other selectable privileges include things like mileage bonuses, upgrade credits, airport club membership discounts and guest passes, elite status for a friend, and so on.

Air Canada is not the first North American airline to offer free Wi-Fi. Southwest Airlines offers it as a perk for top-level A-List Preferred members of its Rapid Rewards program. JetBlue has long been offering free Wi-Fi (which it calls Fly-Fi) to all passengers.

But Air Canada may be the first to offer free Gogo Wi-Fi. JetBlue developed its proprietary satellite-based Wi-Fi technology with Viasat, and Southwest’s Internet provider is Global Eagle Entertainment – although it is using Panasonic Avionics to install Wi-Fi on newly delivered aircraft, including its new 737MAX planes.

Here’s hoping that other North American carriers consider a similar move. Will they? Leave your comments below. 

ICYMI, see the 25 most recent TravelSkills posts right here

Reassessing your card strategy? See our “Credit Card Deals” tab to shop around! It helps us help you!

Don’t miss out! Join the 185,000+ people who read TravelSkills every month! Sign up here for one email-per-day updates!


Print pagePDF pageEmail page

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Editorial Disclaimer: This editorial content is not provided or commissioned by the credit card issuer. Opinions expressed here are author's alone, not those of the credit card issuer, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the credit card issuer. This site may be compensated through the credit card issuer Affiliate Program. Responses in the comments section are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.”