Starting today, wifi is free on board most American Airlines flights. They join Delta and JetBlue in offering free wifi, and both United and Alaska are moving to free as they introduce Starlink.
- Free for all AAdvantage members. If you’re not a member, you’ll need to become one to get wifi free onborad.
- Not every domestic plane has this set up today. It’s still rolling out this month, but will be on all narrowbody aircraft (those currently equipped with ViaSat and Intelsat satellite wifi). That includes all two-cabin regional jets as well.
- American reports that 73% of their dual class regional jet fleet currently has satellite wifi. A year ago they had targeted completion by end of 2025, but I understand they ran into supply chain issues.
- Widebodies with ViaSat come later in spring. Widebodies that still have slower Panasonic systems won’t have free wifi.
I’ve asked American what happens with customers who have monthly and annual plans.
- Do they need to cancel these plans to avoid auto-billing?
- Will there be any pro-rata refunds for those who have already paid partial months? Or especially those that have paid annually?
I’m still waiting to hear back on this, so if you’re a monthly subscriber you’ll want to remain vigilant although it’s possible you won’t want to give up your plan until later in the month as buying single flight wifi on planes not yet switched over to free remains expensive.
American’s CEO went from believing wifi bandwidth was expensive and required revenue to generating revenue for it – with an AT&T sponsorship, and by using it to incentivize enrollment in AAdvantage, which they can monetize (especially through their partnership with Citibank).
It took a long time to come to fruition, in part because they’ve changed their perspective in viewing Spirit and Frontier as primary competitors and threats to realize that they need to compete for premium business. At the same time, former CEO Doug Parker explains that their contracts required them to pay more the more bandwidth gets used – and free wifi pushes usage off the charts. So they needed those renegotiated, too.
Ultimately, this is a very positive thing for pretty much every customer except me, since I’m happy to pay to keep use of bandwidth limited to me and a few other customers onboard that are willing to pay. I’m one of the only people I’ve ever seen claim they liked American’s expensive wifi over Delta’s free wifi! On net a great thing to do for customer experience.
I would have liked to have seen free wifi as a perk for EXP and CK, and maybe do a timed amount free per-flight for others to help keep the bandwidth from going down the tubes.
With more people on now and streaming let’s see what it’s like. I’ve been getting it free, it’s a nice addition to me but usually not critical. I’ve noticed in the past couple of months more issues with either no wifi or spotty wifi.
Ahh, a happy J6, after all… psh.
For real, good on AA; in 2026 and beyond, every airline (even ULCCs, and especially those doing BYOD) should be able to provide reliable, free WiFi to passengers.
AA is making very positive steps with this. With the flip of a switch, they become the second largest airline in the world in offering free high speed WiFi after Delta.
the real substory is that AA has made very little fanfare about turning on high speed WiFI for Advantage members while UA has made tons of noise about adding StarLink but UA has it on a handful of mainline aircraft at best.
2026 will be the year that free high speed WiFi becomes the norm on US airlines and then will flow out to the world from there.
This is a very positive step for AA; for once, they looked at the cards in their hand and realized they could upstage UA and pull closer to in line with DL.
Now they need to rip the unusable Panasonic systems out of the widebody fleet.
@Brian @George Romey — ‘Wah, wah.. won’t anyone think of the Keys…’ Psh.
@Tim Dunn — Agreed. Delta and jetBlue lead the way on this. American is catching up. United needs to step it up, stop with the $8 WiFi, just make it free. And all airlines should have this by now. It’s 2026, not 1956. C’mon!
“Now they need to rip the unusable Panasonic systems out of the widebody fleet.”
So passengers can enjoy ZERO Wifi over the Pacific and Oceania because of ViaSat’s ongoing lack of satellite coverage? The answer is Starlink.
Starlink users enjoy far superior speeds, stability, reliability and lower latency (delay) due to arrays of low earth orbit satellites that are significantly closer to Earth, reducing data travel distance, making it great for gaming, streaming, and video calls that are rough or impractical on other providers like ViaSat that also has huge holes in its coverage. Starlink is a game-changer.
So far Air France, Air New Zealand, Alaska/Hawaiian Airlines, British Airways, Iberia, Qatar Airways, SAS, Singapore Airlines, Turkish Airlines, United Airlines and Virgin Atlantic among airlines going with Starlink.
@Rebel, that’s because Starlink is the only option on the stable at the moment and provides high speed internet like you’re at home on your sofa to every square foot of the planet.
By the time American actually has a real high speed LEO streaming provider installed on its aircraft in 2028 or 2029, our phones will be able to directly connect to LEO satellites directly through the cabin walls moving with the aircraft and completely bypass the need for ANY in-flight Wifi.
@ Tim Dunn: “With the flip of a switch, they become the second largest airline in the world in offering free high speed WiFi after Delta.”
How is DAL bigger than AA? Bigger profits – yes. Bigger by any other measure of airline size, no:
AA Fleet: 1013 planes / 976 in service
DAL Fleet: 988 planes / 930 in service
(source: planespoters)
AA Seat Miles, 2025: 279.6M
DAL Seat Miles, 2025: 246.9M
(source: airwaysmag)
AA # of Flights, 2025: 2.3M
DAL # of Flights, 2025: 1.8M
(source: airwaysmag)
This is why people bash you so much. You seem to have difficulty admitting that Delta might actually not be “1st!” in everything everywhere. It’s okay to be second. And I’m sure you don’t mean, “Well – I meant AA was the second to DAL in being the second airline offering free Wifi. They copied DAL”… because DAL copied Jetblue – who started offering free Wifi – announced in 2013 and implemented fleet wide in 2017.
Wow! That’s the first I have heard about direct phone to LEO satellites. Cool, but I guess that has to be incorporated into our phone plans, no? Cost? Adoption rates?
anonymous dumb mocker,
it should be obvious that the discussion is about the availability of high speed free Wifi, not the airline as whole.
And, yes, DL leads the industry – not just AA – in number of aircraft w/ high speed WiFi in service but also global coverage.
AA does not have any plans to offer free high speed WiFi on its TATL, TPAC or S. America network.
and on the business front, DL gets more total revenue, profits and has a higher market cap – but you really don’t want to open that can of worms, do you?
I am on an AA narrow body aircraft (a Boeing 737) and was disappointed to see that it still does not have the free wifi.
@Tim Dunn ‘bout to open a can ‘hwoop*ss on that joker! LOL.
@tim Dunn “AA does not have any plans to offer free high speed WiFi on its TATL, TPAC or S. America network”
AA 788 and 789 ViaSat-equipped aircraft will get free wifi.
yes, Gary, eventually.
and since AA chose a solution that doesn’t involve StarLink on the 787, AA might get ahead of UA on WiFi deployment.
But Viasat installations take a long time in comparison to StarLink and LEO satellites. So AA won’t have its 787 fleet equipped anytime soon
and AA will still have the issue of having 787s with high speed WiFi – assuming they can get the capacity from Viasat – while the 777s might fall far behind. It is possible that AA won’t be able to claim to offer free high speed WiFi for years on its international fleet and network – but they still might beat UA.
Okay. As @Gary noted the 78s have viasat and do offer wifi over the oceans. When AA reconfigures the Triples, they will be outfitted with viasat. Currently AA offers free wifi on 90% of the fleet domestically. United shouts starlink, but is super slow to deliver.
Additionally AA has looked at Amazons LEO system for the future.
“And, yes, DL leads the industry – not just AA – in number of aircraft w/ high speed WiFi in service but also global coverage.”
How you can even say this nonsense is hilarious, Tim.
DL has fewer planes with high speed wifi than AA and that won’t change given AA’s enormously larger regional fleet with high speed wifi nearly complete. Free or otherwise, Delta has fewer high speed internet aircraft installed and fewer aircraft flying with free high speed wifi. Delta has entire mainline plane types without any high speed internet and entire portions of the world with no coverage, whatsoever. Delta has never ever even had wifi to Oceania or Asia has far as I can tell as evidenced by delta.com.
Delta doesn’t even have a plan to equip their mainline fleet with high speed internet. They had one for the 717s but due to poor planning and engineering, it failed
And as Gary said, AA will have free high speed wifi on the widebodies that can currently support it.
Grow up and stop repeating your nonsense. You really are a special kind of crazy.
The Aa website states:
“American offers free high-speed Wi-Fi across these aircraft:
All Airbus A319, A320 and A321 aircraft, and all Boeing 737 aircraft
Select Boeing 787-8 and 787-9 aircraft
Select American Eagle® regional aircraft”
It sounds like the Viasat 787s have it now (newer 788s and 789Ps).
BTW, it seems that you’ll see the wifi symbol on all flights with wifi. It appears that the free ones explain the symbol as high speed wifi, while the paid version is just wifi. The do have 789Ps listed as high speed fir flights today (Wednesday fir me).
I’m bummed that the free wifi I had with my T-Mobile acct. no longer is offered on their aircraft.