American Airlines will give passengers free wi-fi for a limited time.

American’s free Wi-Fi on Viasat equipped planes

American Airlines is giving passengers free wi-fi for the next several weeks.

  • Free Wi-Fi will be available from April 13 through May 25, 2022
  • This will be available on Viasat-equipped aircraft, which includes a vast majority of the narrow body mainline fleet
  • Customers will have to watch a sponsored ad, and then can be connected to the full Wi-Fi offering for a limited time session (I’m not sure how long that is, exactly)
  • This is being done to drive awareness for American’s inflight Wi-Fi offering, and to “help American better understand what inflight experiences are most meaningful to customers”

AA: offering customers free Wi-Fi from April 13 to May 25 on Viasat-equipped narrowbody aircraft. Customers may watch a sponsored ad and then connect to the Wi-Fi for a time-limited session at no cost.

..drive awareness for the inflight portal, https://t.co/aY0XMg5GyI, and help..

— 🇺🇦 JonNYC 🇺🇦 (@xJonNYC) April 12, 2022

Since American doesn't have seatback entertainment on most narrow body planes, this is a nice way to pass time on American, in addition to the carrier's streaming library of movies and TV shows. It's probably not that exciting for those of us who pay for a monthly pass.

Free Wi-Fi is a good way to pass time on American

Could free Wi-Fi on American become permanent?

One of the only airlines in the world that offers free wi-fi without caps on usage is JetBlue, and it is a fantastic point of differentiation. The other airlines have been slow.

For a couple of years now, Delta executives have been talking about how the airline is working towards offering all passengers free wi-fi. The challenge for Delta has been that they couldn't support the amount of bandwidth required to offer this.

Viasat is the same system that American and JetBlue use. Viasat is the best inflight wi-fi offering out there, and we know that Delta offers Viasat, which eliminates the major hurdle to free wi-fi becoming a reality.

It will be something that other major carriers will have to match when Delta offers free wi-fi. The trial is being run by the airline as a test because American is expecting this time to come sooner than later. American wants to know how passengers use wi-fi, how much they use it, and how much different it is from flight to flight.

American will likely eventually follow Delta with free Wi-Fi

Bottom line

For the next several weeks, American Airlines will offer passengers free wi-fi. Passengers will be able to enjoy a limited time session if they watch an ad.

It is claimed that this is being done to help American understand what is most meaningful to customers, and to drive awareness for American's wi-fi offering. This is a trial to see what usage patterns are like, and it seems like American is anticipating that there will eventually be a standard free offering.

What do you think about American Airlines offering free inflight internet?

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