Free Wi-Fi Is On Its Way To American Airlines (axios.com) 43
American Airlines announced today that it will add free in-flight Wi-Fi starting in 2026. However, Axios notes you'll need to be an AAdvantage member (American's loyalty program) to access it. From the report: American is partnering with AT&T to introduce free WiFi in January. It will be available on about 90% of the airlines' fleet, which will be planes equipped with Viasat and Intelsat high-speed satellite connectivity, per a press release. More than 500 of the airlines regional planes are expected to have high-speed WiFi capabilities by the end of the year.
They already have it? (Score:2)
I flew with them a couple days ago and they already had an option to watch an ad and get free wifi. Cool that they'll let you do it "ad free" but they'll probably just make you watch an ad before you can get to that menu like the ads they put before movies.
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Airlines do this all the time. Various companies will sponsor "free wifi" for a period of time in order to force ads at you before you can use it.
Sounds like the new thing wont be time limited anymore?
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It's annoying that you have to change your mac address every 20 minutes, but yeah. Free wifi (after hoop jumping) has been available for quite a while on many airlines.
Re: They already have it? (Score:2)
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You fucking people will bitch about ANYTHING!
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So.. do registrations suck or do they not?
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Yes. Yes they do.
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Just wondering if you ever read 1984?
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Multiple times.
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I'll jump in with my takeaways.
Ubiquitous surveillance leads to lack of autonomy for individuals.
You are not allowed to think thoughts that aren't prescribed.
Nothing isn't propaganda.
Aren't we there, or nearly there, today?
are we arguing?
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Did you take anything away from the book?
I'll jump in with my takeaways.
Tell me more! What are your take-aways from Jurassic Park? What about Alien?
are we arguing?
I'm not. You can make up anything you want as far as I am concerned.
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You fucking people will bitch about ANYTHING!
You sound surprised by this. What's life like under that rock?
I suspect, in my cynical way, that this will just be an upsell... We'll give you "free" wifi that will be slow as dogshit in mid-December Scotland or you can pay a "low low price" to get a slightly faster version. Not like airlines don't have form for this.
Besides, I'm old and curmudgeony, why do people need internets on a flight? Use the time to disconnect and relax. Read a book, watch a movie, play a game if your seat has enough space.. S
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It's like every time I stay in a hotel. First, you get some broken ass captive portal that refuses to route anything until you run some Javascript-enabled graphical web browser and enter some bullshit. Then it periodically shits itself and makes you do it again throughout your stay, and every time it cycles it drops all the connections and breaks the network. Then they try to upsell it if you want to have anything that's actually useful. Then, because this is a plane, the twits will still insist that you le
Mandatory-online services (Score:2)
TL;DR: because nowadays most of the activities that you or I would consider happen to unnecessarily depend on an internet connection.
why do people need internets on a flight?
(Putting aside social network that rely on FOMO to keep eyeballs glue on the screen to then make a profit by further reselling said glued eyeball to advertisers).
Because, for a lot of younger people nowaday...
Read a book, watch a movie, play a game
...exercising any of the above activities requires an always on connection for various reasons of DRM (and telemetry for ad resale).
When you say "read a book" you think a
More online services (Score:2)
For some poeple...
Stare out the window or *gasp* how about exercising your imagination.
...that part requires ChatGPT or something.
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I flew with them a couple days ago and they already had an option to watch an ad and get free wifi. Cool that they'll let you do it "ad free" but they'll probably just make you watch an ad before you can get to that menu like the ads they put before movies.
Regional or Mainline (and domestic or international), and what aircraft? AA has, in the past, had differences based on the details of the aircraft, due to historical installations of equipment on the aircraft (and I have experienced equipment (aircraft) swaps that upended what was expected due to those differences). If the goal is to make things consistent, I will be all for it.
End of the seat back screen (Score:4, Interesting)
It was a very 2000s to 2010s feature that we've all seen whittle away with hosted video and that will continue. A big reason I can see airlines giving this for free is they can really eliminate the screens now which are probably a maintenance nightmare and planes have lifetimes of 20+ years.
Just give people a power socket and some of that internet and they'll be set, and I'm here for it.
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Not necessarily. Delta (and maybe others) let you control the seat back screen with your phone.
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Yeah Delta's are definitely the nicest but I wonder how many new planes will ship with that if in flight internet is reliable, not saying they're gonna rip them out but over the next 5-10 years they will decline out as aircraft get replaced. You see them in use less and less at least in my past years flying, usually just see the map up.
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Yeah for sure (although some, like the OG Jetblue fleet are getting quite worn) I am just saying that trend will be phased out if inflight internet is available.
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It was a very 2000s to 2010s feature that we've all seen whittle away with hosted video and that will continue. A big reason I can see airlines giving this for free is they can really eliminate the screens now which are probably a maintenance nightmare and planes have lifetimes of 20+ years.
Just give people a power socket and some of that internet and they'll be set, and I'm here for it.
This has been the AA way for some time. No seat back screens (and the weight required, which means fuel, which means money), as they believe most customers will have a personal electronic device, and will be sufficiently happy to either play/stream what they brought, or use the on-aircraft wifi provided audio/video content. They are likely right at least some of the time. I know I always download more than enough content to keep myself entertained on AA flights (although do look to see if any entertainme
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Yeah I think it's just a matter of bandwidth, once this is at the point where the wifi on the plane is close or equal to the wifi in the airport then 97.2% of people's needs are met and the rest brought books.
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Domestic flights are easy to provide WiFi service for. Contrary to popular belief, most of the flights with free WiFi are ground-based systems - the internet is beamed to the plane via ground stations. This allows for very fast low latency internet service that's also VERY cheap to provide because it's just providing a local connection.
International flights are much harder and require satellite based infrastructure, which generally means a much slower connection, with higher latency and higher costs. I don'
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It's nothing to do with what they think people have, it's to do with the length of service. For a while the trend was to roll out screens everywhere but then airlines started competing with low cost budget airlines for short haul flights. Airlines figure people will be fine for a couple of hours. For AA the norm is that a short haul flight = no inflight entertainment, and for long haul yes inflight entertainment. That's the norm for most airlines.
It costs a disproportionate amount of money to provide in fli
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One of the best things I've ever seen was on a Pegasus airlines flight out of Turkey. Low cost budget airline so of course no screens. But what it DID have was a tablet clip. The clip was also adjustable, the guy next to me had his phone clipped in it, I had my Surface Pro clipped in and we watched our own stuff.
Of course that was back in the days before Enshittification where Netflix still allowed you to download movies for offline watching on your device.
Anyway going on holidays next week and for the firs
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It was a very 2000s to 2010s feature that we've all seen whittle away with hosted video and that will continue. A big reason I can see airlines giving this for free is they can really eliminate the screens now which are probably a maintenance nightmare and planes have lifetimes of 20+ years.
Just give people a power socket and some of that internet and they'll be set, and I'm here for it.
Airframes have lifespans measured in decades, cabins tend to be measured in years. Most cabins are refitted about every 8 years or so, so IFEs tend to be designed to last that long.
Budget airlines have been getting rid of seat back screens for years because it saves a few pennies and a few grams. Less about maintenance as they're not an expensive item to maintain.
This is more about AA marketing than cost savings. They've already taken the seat back screens out of their narrowbodies although they're st
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Yeah my theory is with strong and reliable enough internet those screens will get swapped with iPad holders on their next refit which no IFE is going to beat on maintenance cost.
Newsflash (Score:3, Informative)
Re: Newsflash (Score:2)
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You probably will have to install the AA app on your device, which may enquire interesting permissions.
Re: Newsflash (Score:2)
BitTorrent (Score:1)
Anyone know how to automatically start a torrent server the instant it enters international airspace? Asking for a friend.
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bandwidth to low for that.
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Anyone know how extradition works? Asking for an anonymous coward.
Unfortunately not international (Score:2)
Unfortunately it doesn't seem to apply to international flights (which I take the most). International mostly uses Panasonic, which wasn't a partner for T-Mobile's free wifi either. It's $25 or $30 for wifi, and very spotty and slow. That being said, I have been on a couple AA international flights recently that were upgraded to Viasat, and there they were charging I think $10 or 800 miles.
Finally (Score:2)
space (Score:2)
Can I use that wifi to make more space for my knees?