Wi-Fi has become an important in-flight amenity as a reclining seat and extra legroom. Routehappy, the product differentiation platform for air travel, announced findings of its new study about global state of Wi-Fi used on airlines.
Some key highlights include:
- 52 airlines worldwide now offer in-flight Wi-Fi in most regions of the globe
- Flyers have at least "some" chance of Wi-Fi on 24% of flights worldwide, with U.S. airlines offering at least "some" chance of Wi-Fi on 66% of their flights system wide and non-U.S. airlines offering at least "some" chance on 15% of their international flights
- Nine non-U.S. airlines now offer at least a "very good" chance of Wi-Fi on more than 20% of their international flight miles: Japan, Emirates, Aeroflot, Iberia, Lufthansa, Singapore, Etihad, Norwegian, and Icelandair, with the latter two surpassing 80%
- Delta offers the most flights and flight miles with Wi-Fi of all airlines, by far
- United has most international planes with Wi-Fi and uniquely offers "Best" Wi-Fi
- American/US offers "better" Wi-Fi on its entire Airbus narrowbody fleet, which totals more than 300 aircraft
- 18 months ago, United offered at least "some" chance of Wi-Fi on 518 U.S. domestic flights, today it is 1445, a 179% increase; American added 630, Delta 503, JetBlue 386
- Virgin America, Alaska, United lead on offering both Wi-Fi and power on the same flights
- All the busiest U.S. domestic routes (20 daily flights or more in each direction including JFK-LAX, LGA-BOS, LGA-DCA, JFK-SFO, CLT-ATL) have Wi-Fi availability on all flights
- The "best" or highest bandwidth system was introduced in 2014 and is currently available on nearly 1% of U.S. flights
- Airlines are upgrading from Gogo ATG to Gogo ATG-4 ("better") on hundreds of aircraft
