American Airlines Trialing Free Wi-Fi: A Step In The Right Direction

Inflight Wi-Fi is an area where JetBlue has been an industry leader, as the airline has been offering fast and free Wi-Fi for well over a decade. Among the “big three” US carriers, Delta and United have been making huge progress, both in terms of the speed of Wi-Fi, plus in terms of plans to make Wi-Fi free for passengers.

Up until recently, American has continued to insist that it has no plans to offer free Wi-Fi. However, it looks like that’s starting to change, as reported by Zach Griff. First let me provide some background, and then we’ll talk about the latest development.

American has lost its edge with inflight Wi-Fi

Going back several years, American was the best of the “big three” airline when it came to inflight Wi-Fi. The airline had Viasat Wi-Fi on the most jets, meaning that passengers had access to fast Wi-Fi. Delta and United also charged for Wi-Fi, but had considerably worse systems for inflight connectivity.

This situation has now changed:

• Delta is in the process of rolling out free Wi-Fi throughout its fleet, made possible by the widespread installation of Viasat Wi-Fi
• United has announced that it’s introducing free Wi-Fi as of this year, as it installs Starlink Wi-Fi

Currently Delta beats American, since it also has fast Wi-Fi, but it’s free. Meanwhile United will beat American once it has Starlink, but it’ll be years before that’s fully rolled out (though United is making progress with introducing Viasat Wi-Fi, seemingly as an interim solution).

When it comes to American, the issue isn’t just that the airline charges for Wi-Fi, but it’s also how much the airline charges. For example, Alaska, Southwest, and United, all charge $8 per segment for Wi-Fi, while American’s pricing is all over the place, and sometimes costs $20+ per segment.

American doesn’t even offer free inflight messaging, aside from the T-Mobile partnership. That’s wild because:

• It’s something that even United offers at this point, with its inferior connectivity system
• American promised several years back that it would introduce free inflight messaging, but then backtracked

Going back as recently as a few months, American CEO Robert Isom went on record as saying that the airline had no plans to introduce free Wi-Fi. Well, it looks like there might finally be a change of heart…

American will trial free Wi-Fi on select flights

Starting next week (early March 2025), American plans to trial offering free Wi-Fi on select flights. Specifically, the trial will take place on the following routes, in both directions:

• Between Charlotte (CLT) and Jacksonville (JAX)
• Between Charlotte (CLT) and Raleigh (RDU)
• Between Chicago (ORD) and Miami (MIA)

As American describes it, “through this test, we’ll be assessing customer take rates for inflight Wi-Fi, evaluating our provider and aircraft capacity, and – perhaps most important – measuring the impact to customer satisfaction via NPS scores.” So as you can see, the goal is to see how technically feasible this is, and also if it positively impacts the impression that passengers have of their journey.

Here’s an additional statement that American provided about this move:

“With the creation of our new Customer Experience organization led by Chief Customer Officer Heather Garboden, American Airlines is more committed than ever to enhancing every aspect of our customers’ travel journey. Staying connected in the skies is critical to today’s passengers and through this limited-time complimentary Wi-Fi test, we are exploring opportunities to build upon our high-speed Wi-Fi offerings to stay competitive in the industry and give our customers what we know they want.”

American has been greatly lagging both Delta and United when it comes to profitability. For so long, the airline thought it didn’t really need to compete with those airlines on product, but rather, that it could be profitable through its (primarily domestic) network.

That whole strategy just hasn’t materialized, and recently, we learned about some major changes at the airline, whereby management realizes the airline needs to become more competitive, and focus on the passenger experience. Look, I don’t think we’re suddenly going to see American retrofit narrow body planes with TVs, or massively improve the soft product, but I think the airline will no longer cut corners in areas where it’s so glaringly obvious that the airline needs to compete.

If both Delta and United are offering free Wi-Fi, it’s clear that American needs to do that as well. So we’ll see what comes of this test. I can’t imagine that the conclusion from this test will be that passengers don’t value free Wi-Fi, and that the airline doesn’t move forward with this. Now, the timeline with which that happens remains to be seen, though.

Bottom line

American finally seems ready to compete a bit when it comes to Wi-Fi. For so long, the airline had the edge by offering high speed Wi-Fi, even if it wasn’t free. But with Delta introducing free Wi-Fi, and United also planning on doing so in the future, it’s clear that American needs to compete.

So American is now trialing free Wi-Fi on a few domestic routes, to determine the bandwidth situation, plus the impact on customer satisfaction. I’m delighted to see this change, and look forward to learning the results.

Are you surprised to see American finally running a free Wi-Fi trial?