American Airlines is installing high speed internet in its two-cabin regional aircraft. That means Embraer E-175, Bombardier CR7 and CR9s. (Their 50 seat Embraer E-145s will remain dark.)
- Regional jet wifi will be provided by Intelsat, which acquired Gogo’s commercial business. This is the provider for American’s Airbus A320 and legacy US Airways A319 aircraft.
- They’re replacing the old Gogo air to ground systems currently on these aircraft. It’s gotten to the point that I avoid American’s regional jets whenever I can because I don’t want to fly without functional internet. That will change as these retrofits progress.
However, I had just assumed they would take each plane out of service, take out the existing air to ground system and install the satellite kit, returning regional jets to the skies with faster internet. That’s especially true for speed, as the conversion moves away from a network Intelsat intends to retire. Only that isn’t what’s happening.
Instead, the old wifi will go dark on planes and those planes will keep flying without any internet until they upgrade the planes with new satellite systems.
According to an airline spokesperson,
American Airlines is working through installing a new Wi-Fi system across several aircraft types and plans to modify over 500 aircraft this year. The new system provides high speed satellite Wi-Fi, allowing for continuous coverage with faster connection speed, ability for more devices to be connected with no adverse effect on Internet speed, and gate-to-gate connectivity. During any given week, less than 3% of regional jets could be without Wi-Fi, however, customers can still access American’s free inflight entertainment options.
American doesn’t know which planes will be dark at any given time when customers book tickets, or which dark planes will be assigned to flights until shortly before travel. But they have a system in place to notify customers in advance that the flights they’ve booked won’t have any internet. ?
Even if it’s just about 3% of the regional fleet at any time that will be dark that’s on top of baseline risk that a given aircraft’s wifi will be out for any given flight.
I’m really looking forward to these planes having functional wifi. It won’t be as good as the Starlink that United will be installing, and offering to passengers for free, but it will solve a pain point that’s kept me mostly off of them. However I’m going to have them even more on my ‘do not fly’ list until the process is completed because the chance of no internet at all is even worse than slow internet.
Another post about onboard WiFi, so naturally Gary shares his excitement for Starlink, yet again.
While better onboard WiFi is nice, relying on ‘President’ Musk is shortsighted. Sure, you might think he’s ‘your’ genius tech-bro oligarch today, but he will inevitably turn on you. He just recently ‘went to war’ against the far-right folks by supporting H-1B visas.
With Starlink specifically, recall how the Ukrainians relied on the service starting in 2022, but by 2023 Elon played geopolitics by withholding service at a critical point in their counteroffensive. Admittedly, Biden and our allies were weak to not nationalize this company at that very moment.
In October 2024, WSJ reported on Musk’s backchanneling with the Russians. He’s clearly compromised. The tech is good; the owner is not. Remove him so he can enjoy his ketamine.
“3%” plus existing satellite equipped E175s, often found INOP first flight out of overnight base maintenance, not to mention the INOP seat power.
Chances are pretty high that due to the delayed/slow delivery of aircraft on order, AA doesn’t have the addition capacity/luxury of keeping flights going while taking aircraft offline for the retrofit. The only way to not have an offline experience would be to reduce the number of flights by the aircraft being offline to retrofit it.
But that would be a pretty big hit to revenue for the relatively short period of time the aircraft isn’t providing internet service.
It really doesn’t make economic sense to do so for such a relatively short period of inconvenience.
Put your phone down and relax. The world will still be there when you land.
The horror of flying without wifi! Imagine being disconnected for so long!
Why does anyone even fly AA anymore? What a garbage airline. US sucks but not as bad as AA. Free Starlink WiFi for all, ahead of schedule. Better on time arrival percentages. AA is just garbage, like all of One World.
Apparently. no one cares if an airplane crashes anymore – as long as it has good wi-fi.
These planes are largely on routes under 3 hours, and many under 2. I’m sure you’ll cope! AA WiFi prices are incredibly steep so even on flights with it on board I will not pay for it (preferably I’d fly an airline with it free like B6/DL) but for the routes I fly that doesn’t always make sense