Long-haul flights can get pretty boring if you don’t have company. Spending hours on a plane without anyone you know can seem daunting. However, a person is not alone when he has internet connectivity. Therefore, you should choose your airline carefully when going for those long hauls.
The latest report shows that Virgin Atlantic, Icelandair, Delta and Emirates and Southwest Airlines are at the top when it comes to providing internet connectivity mid-air. British Airways was one of the early adopters of the technology but has fallen behind in the race.
The overall in-flight WiFi trend has increased dramatically in the last year all around the world. The chances of your next flight having internet connectivity have increased from 39 to 43% according to the analysis by the New York-based firm RouteHappy.
The chances of having WiFi on your flight is very high in the US where 80% of the flights have some form internet connectivity. This is a huge increase from the stats in 2015 when only two-thirds of the flights had WiFi. These chances are reversed when you move out of the US and there is a 80% chance that your flight won’t have any sort of connectivity.
According to the report, 13 airlines now offer WiFi globally on all long-haul flights. These include Air Europa, Delta, Emirates, Etihad, Eurowings, EVA Air, Iberia, Kuwait, Lufthansa, SAS, Scoot, United, and Virgin Atlantic. However, just because you have a WiFi connection does not mean you can sit back and enjoy Netflix during the flight. There are only 16% of all Air Seat Miles (ASMs) that have speeds that we are used to in our homes.
Some of the flights that do have the fast connection restrict the use as video streaming takes a lot of bandwidth and slows down the speeds available to other passengers. According to RouteHappy more than half of all in-flight WiFi allows web browsing but have limited media streaming capabilities.
Robert Albert, CEO of Routehappy, said: “2017 was another progressive year for in-flight Wi-Fi, with a large increase in the amount of airlines that provide Wi-Fi access, on top of the growing availability of nearly half the available seat miles worldwide. The 129 percent growth of Best Wi-Fi is extraordinary, it shows the commitment airlines are making to best in class systems and we expect to see this number increase even more in 2018.”
The price of installing the in-flight technology has dropped recently and this has seen a number of airlines jumping on the opportunity to offer in-flight internet connectivity. Maybe one day soon, all the flights in the world will offer some kind of connectivity and this would never have been possible in the past.
Next time you book a long flight, be sure to check these things out.
