Testing American Airlines’ new — and massively improved — regional jet Wi-Fi

Historically, flying on a regional jet meant you’d be disconnected until you landed. Those days, however, are about to be a distant memory — especially if you’re flying on American Airlines. In late 2023, the carrier announced that it would install satellite-based Wi-Fi service across nearly 500 American Eagle regional jets. This includes the following …

Mar 6, 2025 - 21:05

Testing American Airlines’ new — and massively improved — regional jet Wi-Fi

Historically, flying on a regional jet meant you’d be disconnected until you landed.

Those days, however, are about to be a distant memory — especially if you’re flying on American Airlines.

In late 2023, the carrier announced that it would install satellite-based Wi-Fi service across nearly 500 American Eagle regional jets. This includes the following two-class jets: Bombardier CRJ-700, Bombardier CRJ-900, Embraer E170 and Embraer E175. Unfortunately, the Bombardier CRJ-200 and the Embraer E145, which don’t currently offer Wi-Fi, still won’t receive internet service.

While the rollout started last year and is still very much ongoing, I scored an amazing upgrade on a recent flight from Philadelphia to Nashville. (And no, I’m not talking about my first complimentary first-class upgrade as an AAdvantage Executive Platinum member in nearly six months.)

As I approached the gate and looked at the Embraer E175 waiting to fly me down to Nashville, I noticed something strange about the top of the fuselage. The jet appeared to have a flat satellite radome at the back near the tail, my first indication that this would be an American Eagle regional flight like no other.

Once inside, I asked the flight attendant if the plane might have the new Wi-Fi experience. Her reply? “All I know is that I usually hear lots of complaints about internet access on these planes.”

My hopes briefly dashed, I quickly connected to aainflight.com, American’s Wi-Fi landing page — and voila. I scrolled to the bottom and confirmed that this jet, an 11-year-old Embraer E175 registered N422YX, had indeed been upgraded with an Intelsat antenna.

And then, as a self-proclaimed techie, I decided to spend the next 90 minutes putting the new Wi-Fi service through the paces.

The first step was actually connecting to the internet. Though American has done a great job bringing faster and more reliable connectivity to the skies, its Wi-Fi pricing scheme is still one of the most expensive in the domestic skies. A flight pass for my short hop to Nashville was $20 or 3,100 miles. On Delta Air Lines, it would have been free, and on United Airlines, it would have cost $8. (Maybe one day American will also introduce free Wi-Fi, but right now, the carrier is only testing such a concept.)

After forking over $20, I started with a simple speed test to determine what I was working with. Download speeds consistently hovered around 10 Mbps, and upload speeds clocked in around 4 Mbps. The latency, measured by ping, was nearly 700 milliseconds.

Those numbers might not mean much to you, but to me, they indicated that the service should be able to handle video streaming and uploading high-definition content. With such a high latency (which measures how long it takes data to transfer over a network), video calls and live gaming might not work as well, but why not test it all out.

My first test was whether I could access the internet during takeoff, something that wasn’t possible with the older air-to-ground connectivity that American used to offer on regional jets. (Gogo, recently rebranded as Wi-Fi Onboard, is only available when you’re above 10,000 feet.)

Fortunately, I had no trouble connecting during takeoff, descent and even on the ground.

Then, I decided to play around with some more intensive tasks. To start, I opened up all four devices I was traveling with: a MacBook Air, an iPad Pro, an iPhone 16 Pro and an iPhone 15 Pro. (I always travel with a backup phone because you never know when your primary phone will die or get damaged.)

I immediately opened streaming services across all four devices, and I’m pleased to report that I had no trouble watching different scenes from Severance on all four devices with no lag at all.

I tried other things, like browsing Instagram and TikTok, and, once again, there was minimal buffering. At one point, I needed to restart the Instagram app to get it to load again, but that was the only major internet hiccup I experienced throughout the flight.

In addition to the faster speeds and improved reliability of satellite Wi-Fi, another major upgrade is coverage. American’s air-to-ground provider only offered reception over the continental U.S.

With the new satellite solution, you can stay connected wherever American’s regional jets fly. From Canada to the Caribbean, you’ll have global coverage.

Throughout the flight, I continued to push the Wi-Fi to its limits. I ran into a few roadblocks, but not because of a technical limitation. When I tried using Zoom and FaceTime, I found that my calls wouldn’t connect. Although the Wi-Fi speeds were certainly fast enough to support these apps, Federal Aviation Administration rules prohibit video calls inflight, so American installed blockers that prevented the use of these apps.

Before long, it was time to descend into Nashville. Back in the day, that would’ve meant wrapping up all your work and saying goodbye (if you could even connect) to your friends and family until you landed. In fact, the prerecorded landing announcement even mentioned that Wi-Fi would be unavailable once we passed below 10,000 feet.

But this is a new era, and I was still receiving texts and notifications all the way until we parked at Gate T1 at Nashville International Airport (BNA).

As I exited the plane, I reminisced about the days when flying on regional jets, especially the Embraer E170 family, presented a big trade-off for me. While I find the cabin configuration to be comfortable in both economy and first class, I often avoided these planes during the work day because of their unreliable and slow Wi-Fi.

But now that more and more planes are getting satellite connectivity, I won’t shy away from booking a regional jet for my upcoming flight.

American plans to have 100 aircraft with high-speed Wi-Fi installed by the end of March and expects to have this tech installed across nearly 500 dual-class regional jets by the end of 2025.

If only American could tell me during booking which plane would have what Wi-Fi provider, I’d be golden. But until then, I (and my Slack feed) will be hoping that my next American Eagle flight has satellite internet connectivity.

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