WOW: American Airlines Free Inflight Wi-Fi Launching January 2026

Here’s an exciting and long overdue announcement…

American will offer free Wi-Fi for AAdvantage members

American Airlines has announced that it will be introducing free inflight Wi-Fi as of January 2026, sponsored by AT&T. Free Wi-Fi will be available exclusively for members of the carrier’s AAdvantage program, and the airline highlights how it will offer free inflight connectivity on more planes than any other domestic carrier.

This will be offered on all aircraft equipped with Viasat and Intelsat high speed satellite connectivity, accounting for roughly 90% of the fleet. This means that many wide body jets won’t be offering free Wi-Fi. That’s fair enough, since Delta is struggling with actually offering its promised free Wi-Fi in many long haul markets due to satellite availability, and that has now been delayed by up to two years.

Here’s how Heather Garboden, American’s Chief Customer Officer, describes this development:

“Our customers greatly value staying connected while in the air, whether communicating with friends, getting work done, checking in on social media or streaming their favorite subscription services. We’ve been working diligently to outfit our aircraft with best-in-class high-speed Wi-Fi and together with AT&T are proud to offer those services at no cost to our most loyal customers.”

In recent weeks, American has started trialing offering free Wi-Fi on select flights, to asses customer take rates for inflight Wi-Fi, evaluating provider and aircraft capacity, and measuring the impact to customer satisfaction via NPS scores.

What an exciting development for American passengers!

In recent years, American has really lost its edge when it comes to inflight connectivity, so I’d consider this to be a hugely positive announcement. Let me provide some background…

Going back several years, American was the best of the “big three” airlines 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. Over time, the situation 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 was going to beat American once it had 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 hasn’t just been that the airline charges for Wi-Fi, but also how much the airline has been charging. 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 hasn’t even been offering 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 several months ago, American CEO Robert Isom went on record as saying that the airline had no plans to introduce free Wi-Fi. Clearly we’re finally seeing management change its strategy. 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 there are some major changes at the airline, whereby management realizes the company 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. With both Delta and United pledging to offer free Wi-Fi, it has been clear that American needs to do this as well, which is why we’re seeing this change.

Bottom line

American has announced plans to introduce free inflight Wi-Fi as of January 2026. This will be available for AAdvantage members on aircraft equipped with Viasat and Intelsat connectivity, which includes a vast majority of narrow body jets. Competitively, American needed to do this, so I’m happy to see the company is actually following through on this…

What do you make of American introducing free Wi-Fi?