Southwest Airlines flies 41% of the seats out of my home airport in Austin. I can’t avoid them. I’ve wanted to, and it’s not because of checked bag fees (I have status) and it’s not because I don’t love their new boarding.
I’m actually the perfect customer for the ‘new’ Southwest in a lot of ways. I’m willing to pay for more legroom so I can open up my laptop and work. They’re going to be opening lounges. I’m betting they add first class.
The biggest problem with Southwest Airlines is that their wifi doesn’t work very well. Flying Southwest has meant giving up hours of productivity for me. And things are worse now that the wifi is free. They should have raised the price of wifi, to ration what limited bandwidth they have on many aircraft.
A little over 40% of their 737 MAX 8 aircraft have ViaSat, which is good, similar to American and Delta. The rest of the fleet is hit or miss at best.
This is the same reason I avoided flying United for so long! But I flew United this week and had a Starlink-equipped regional jet. Starlink wifi just works. You’re in the air and you might as well be on the ground. In fact it works better than most home wifi networks.
The great news is that Southwest Airlines just announced they’re moving to Starlink, and that they expect to do it quickly.
- The first Starlink-equipped aircraft this summer
- More than 300 aircraft by end of the year
It appears they aren’t going to outfit the whole fleet with Starlink. They’ve just been putting in ViaSat, which works fine (but doesn’t come close to Starlink). But we should soon reach the point where flying Southwest isn’t a tradeoff with getting work done. I’d love it if they offered AC outlets at their seats – but that’s why I gave up my Lenovo X1 Carbon (poor battery) and travel with a machine that can go all day without charging.
I never understood the obsession with wifi in air
One of the things I enjoy most on flights is just shutting down, even on very long haul flights (12 and 14 hrs…) let alone on a domestic 2-3 hrs flight
I want magazines back!
Aircraft types: Does adding 120v outlets to each seat ned more than the obvious wiring harness cost? E.g. does power generator or the APU need upgrading as well?
Thanks.
@Gary – You can’t tease us like that. Now I have to know what you do use!
I’m also wondering why your battery life was terrible. The X1 Carbon had a pretty healthy battery life last time I was using one as a daily driver (granted, this was in like 2018 or something). Did it belong to your employer? I’ve seen many laptops ruined by IT/security that doesn’t factor in user experience or lost productivity in selecting a vendor.
@Gary Leff — It is an improvement, but, the main issue these days is that fares are not cheap anymore on SWA. Blame whoever or whatever, but, they’re a LCC charging like a legacy carrier.
@doug — In 2026, all airlines can and should provide free, reliable WiFi to all passengers. The technology is there.
wow. WN might have high speed WiFi on its entire fleet before UA if WN stays with Viasat on some aircraft and adds Viasat on the rest of their fleet.
UA will be last of the big 4 and behind B6 in high speed WiFi deployment.
Go, WN, go!
@Tim Dunn … How’r those 717, CRJs comin’ along? (You don’t have to take the bait…)
Starlink is great until both pax left and right, front and rear start taking and receiving calls via WiFi calling and talking for hours. Pick your poison!
I wish they block it.
People would have paid $8 for Starlink.
Maybe even the same people who won’t pay $100 to fly 250 miles with the new gouge fares.
Excellent move by SW, but strange that they aren’t planning the whole fleet. Starlink is a huge product differentiator and competitive advantage over airlines with high latency, slow last-gen wifi.