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American will offer free WiFi to AAdvantage members, sponsored by AT&T, starting in January 2026.
Unfortunately, that will only cover the 90% of its fleet that has Viasat or Intelsat/GoGo WiFi.
The airline’s widebody fleet, including already delivered 777s and 787s have Panasonic WiFi, and won’t deliver free WiFi.
Free WiFi is quickly becoming table stakes for US airlines, and American had no choice other than to match offerings from Delta, JetBlue, Hawaiian, and United. American already doesn’t compete with Delta, JetBlue, and United in seatback entertainment and couldn’t afford to fall further behind.
But unfortunately, the Panasonic offering simply doesn’t have the bandwidth to provide it free planewide, so American’s longest flights won’t have free WiFi.
Airlines with free Starlink, such as Hawaiian and soon, United, will find themselves at a massive competitive advantage thanks to the robustness of that service.
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6 Comments On "American Will Finally Launch Free WiFi Next Year, But It Won’t Include Flights Where You Want It The Most"
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It’s a travesty that they charge $25 for WiFi.
@Dan A few months ago, I commented on the article regarding the El Al privacy screens and I kind of touched on the above. We had a conversation regarding the free Wifi and seatback IFE that Delta and United are promoting vs the lack of it on AA. Do you think that AA might have to eventually reverse their decision to remove seatback IFE on their narrowbodies?
Nope, they are doubling down on removing them. Apparently they want to compete with Spirit.
With United prices!!
AA Chapter 11 bankruptcy, here we come!
You have to realize that their old CEO (Doug Parker) was trying to invent Spirit before Spirit existed (or at least expanded and became mainstream). How the determination that this guy would be a good CEO for the US Airways / American Airlines post-merger airline, I’ll never understand.