American Airlines has finally announced free wifi. It will start in January 2026, and will apply to planes equipped with ViaSat and Intelsat (formerly Gogo) satellite internet. Widebodies with Panasonic internet will not offer internet for free.
- American really had no choice. Delta offers free wifi and so does JetBlue. United is moving to free Starlink internet, which is the best functionality in the sky. American has been charging up to $29 for a single flight’s connectivity, when other airlines that charge for it ask $8. Free, fast wifi has become a base expectation and airlines charging a premium for it are more expensive than those that do not even at the same ticket price.
- This has been inevitable for six years. When Delta was first expected to announce free wifi back in 2019 American literally had press releases written with the expectation that they would match. Delta delayed their announcement and improved bandwidth, the pandemic hit, and this was delayed but it was always going to happen. The CFO suite pushes back but they had no choice.
- This is a me-too offering and won’t move the competitive needle. American still lacks seat back entertainment screens, offers very little buy on board, and is cheap on snacks. Service is generally less friendly than on Delta, too.
In 2012 I wrote that wifi would be free on board within a decade, once there was enough bandwidth on board so that one customer’s use didn’t trade off with another’s. That’s largely happened though widespread adoption was delayed by the pandemic. Bundling services, when there’s no tradeoff between one customer consuming the product and another doing so, is a profit-maximizing strategy for the same reason cable companies bundle channels.
Here, though, American Airlines appears to be generating some revenue by partnering with AT&T on the project. You don’t have to be an AT&T customer to get free wifi, so it’s not yet clear what this partnership means other than advertising them.
Like Delta, passengers will need to be AAdvantage members for free wifi. That should drive program signups, and the hope is that they’ll be able to convert new members to co-brand credit card customers.
Since wifi rebates are part of the Citi small business card from American, and also the premium Aviator Silver AAdvantage card, it’ll be interesting to see whether there are any replacement benefits for those products. There’s time, though, to find out because this benefit is still half a year away.
American’s new Boeing 787-9 aircraft entering service will feature ViaSat. However, existing widebodies (Boeing 787-8 and -9, Beoing 777-200 and -300ER) have Panasonic and the system that’s in place simply lacks the bandwidth for free wifi. When wifi is free, more passengers use it. And while service is improved compared to a couple of years ago, it can crawl at current usage levels. Free would render it unusable.