With marketing dollars from T-mobile, Southwest will begin offering free wifi to Rapid Rewards members starting October 24. The problem is that Southwest currently offers the worst wifi among U.S. airlines.
- Delta was on the verge of offering free wifi in 2019, when their tests showed that they didn’t have enough bandwidth – when it’s free, far more people use it, and that degrades the qualiy of service for everyone. Delta already had much better wifi then than Southwest offers today. Add in much greater adoption, and the worry is that free wifi becomes unusable.
- Worry not for the airline’s bottom line, because they’ve got T-Mobile dollars attached to the offering (much as American Airlines has AT&T dollars attached to their free wifi that starts next year).
- And like many others, they’re tying it to joining the airline’s frequent flyer program first. In that way, they fill the top of the marketing funnel that allows them to pitch credit cards to disgruntled customers that don’t like new checked bag fees and seat fees (some of which are waived with the card).
Delta, United, American, Hawaian, Alaska and JetBlue all have free high speed wifi either in place or in the process. Spirit Airlines offers inexpensive, higher quality wifi than Southwest. Frontier Airlines does not offer wifi, which is the single biggest reason I do not fly with them.
At Southwest I’ve been grateful that they’ve charged $8 per flight segment (two segments = $16) because that discourages use and preserves what little system capacity they offer for those willing to pay. I would have preferred $15 wifi to free.
What Southwest needs most is better wifi, even if it’s a long way in the distance. They should quickly move to Starlink, but if they need a better deal as an early adopter and are willing to make customers wait years then they should mirror JetBlue’s deal with Amazon for Project Kuiper wifi which we likely won’t see until 2027.
Meanwhile, Southwest still lacks seat back entertainment screens and standard power outlets at seats. A subset of their fleet offers USB power.
They’re adding extra legroom seats, but not the ability to pay for a blocked middle seat. And while I expect they’ll eventually add a first class, I’d be surprised to see them retrofit galleys with ovens for meals. Put another way, free wifi is another ‘me too’ move that makes Southwest just like everyone else, but less than.
I really don’t understand airplane WiFi. Is it possible to have a constant fast connection or will it forever be subject to slowing, buffering, cut offs, etc? Is the technology there to bring streaming quality to every seat?
They’re going to “me too” themselves out of existence if they keep this up.
I am curious about the quality of Eutelsat OneWeb. Air Canada has contracted with this European satellite company to deliver free wifi on its planes. Would this be a viable choice for Southwest?
Slow wifi is not ideal, but speed is a distant second to reliability as the most important metric.
If it’s going to take 1 minute to send a plain text email, fine. So be it. The problem with a lot of inflight wifi right now is that 1 minute turns into never, because the wifi isn’t reliable enough, and you have to manually keep hitting send and keep trying until it finally works.
@Jay douglas – I don’t mind ViaSat today, but Starlink is already that ‘constant fast connection’ you’re asking after.
I concur that the Wifi is slow or inoperable on a consistent basis, especially on the 737-700 series. The irony of this announcement is that Southwest also nerfed the most meaningful benefit of the Chase Southwest Performance Business card, 365 annual Wifi credits, while increasing the annual fee from $199 to $299. I was already leaning toward cancelling this card after the renewal date hits, and they definitely just confirmed that card has virtually no tangible benefits that equate to its new annual fee.
I like the current setup. I have the premium business credit card specifically for the wifi. However, whenever they try to give it to everyone on free trials, it becomes unusable. If they give it to all rapid rewards members, it means that I no longer have an incentive to keep the card and that I may have to start looking to another airline as now it is fast enough to do tasks that I need it to do, while it is extremely slow, but I have trouble understanding how that would work if everyone had wifi.
And that Southwest doesn’t offer the option of a blocked middle seat, Can’t you just buy another ticket and use it as an extra seat?
For nonmembers is the price still $8?
Take the win! Every airline should include some form of WiFi for passengers where possible (like, I don’t expect it over the South Pacific), especially if they don’t have IFE screens on-board. It’s 2025, c’mon!
A I think this idea of slow Wi-Fi on Southwest is outdated. I fly them weekly for work and use it frequently as an a-list preferred member for free. I’m usually streaming YouTube with no problem on a very cheap old used tablet.
Yes, the 737-700s head slow Wi-Fi about 2 years ago but they’re being phased out and I find that to be less of a problem. When you’re on the max. It’s never a problem. I don’t recall the-800 being a problem recently either.
I’m wondering how good the service from Eutelsat OneWeb really is. Air Canada signed up with them to provide free Wi-Fi on flights, which sounds great. But would that kind of setup even make sense for Southwest?
OMG. How pathetic people are. You are saying you cannot turn off your STUPID phone for 1-2 hours while you fly? You have a major addiction issue. Take your ”smart” And place it firmly in a dark smelly area of yourself. Or better yet, take a greyhound bus.
I generally do not use wi-fi so having it or not makes no difference. I will use the in flight entertainment on longer flights. I prefer the pocket for seat literature to be up as high as possible so it doesn’t take up knee room. I have taken to placing the contents on the floor if the bunch of sales catalogs and other papers are too thick and causes knee aches. It looks like Elliott is achieving it’s goals.