American Airlines passengers will have a little more of their travel budget left over to buy a sandwich or some other snack at their departure airports starting in January 2026, when the carrier rolls out free inflight Wi-Fi across most of its planes.
The Dallas carrier announced Tuesday that it would make its satellite-linked broadband complimentary to members of its AAdvantage loyalty program, with its crosstown neighbor AT&T sponsoring this freebie.
AA’s press release specifies that this offer will cover all planes “equipped with Viasat and Intelsat high-speed satellite connectivity, accounting for roughly 90% of its fleet” but doesn’t specify airline types. The remaining 10% are most of the aircraft flying AA’s international routes, aviation journalist and analyst Seth Miller explains, as they “mostly fly today with the Panasonic Avionics solution on board; a small number of 787s have the Viasat kit installed.”
A list maintained by the FlyerTalk frequent-traveler hub offers more detail on the aircraft types involved in AA’s fleet: A newer batch of Boeing 787-8 widebodies have Viasat Wi-Fi, while the rest of American’s 787-8, 787-9, 777-200ER and 777-300ER aircraft feature Panasonic Wi-Fi.
While that’s a primarily international subfleet, some of those Boeing twin-engine jets also operate high-capacity domestic routes on American.
AA spokeswoman Andrea Koos said Tuesday that the airline plans to retrofit 777-300s with Viasat hardware “starting in 2025.” It’s also now installing Intelsat Wi-Fi on two-class regional jets—the CRJ-700, CRJ-900, Embraer 170 and Embraer 175, leaving out the smaller, first-class-devoid CRJ-200 and Embraer 145.
AA isn’t saying what passengers without a free AAdvantage account would pay next year, but the airline’s current pricing for Wi-Fi is inconsistent and sometimes extortionate compared to its two largest and oldest peers.
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Where Delta Air Lines provides free Wi-Fi to members of its SkyMiles program and United Airlines charges $8 on domestic flights to members of its MileagePlus program ($10 otherwise), American doesn’t have a standard rate for Wi-Fi on domestic flights.
I have seen such uncompetitive prices in recent years as $29 for a transcon from LAX to Washington’s National Airport, $19 for a flight from National to Dallas-Forth Worth, and $13 for a brief hop from National to New York’s LaGuardia Airport. The FlyerTalk thread on AA Wi-Fi pricing reveals numerous other examples.
(Many T-Mobile subscribers, however, can today get one hour of free connectivity on every domestic AA flight and free full-flight access on four flights a year, courtesy of a bonus that telecom carrier introduced in 2022.)
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At any price, AA’s continued reliance on satellite services based on spacecraft in geostationary Earth orbit, some 22,000 miles up, will leave customers with relatively slower download speeds, vastly slower uploads, and exponentially worse latency than passengers using Wi-Fi based on low-Earth-orbit satellite-broadband services.
SpaceX’s Starlink essentially owns that market today, but rivals such as Amazon’s Project Kuiper are angling for a share of it as well; last week, Amazon inked a deal with Airbus to provide inflight connectivity.
Among US airlines, United announced in September that it would deploy Starlink across its entire fleet and is now putting it into service on the regional jets that have featured some of the airline’s worst connectivity. Hawaiian Airlines and the boutique service JSX also offer Starlink onboard. Per SpaceX’s policy, this access is free to passengers on all of these flights.
AA travelers will have to book elsewhere to experience that connectivity, but they can at least earn AAdvantage miles and status-qualifying points by flying on Starlink-equipped partner airlines in the oneworld alliance that American co-founded in 1999. That includes a growing number of Qatar Airways flights today and others on Hawaiian once it joins oneworld sometime in 2026.
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This article was published by WTVG on 2025-04-15 13:24:00
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