American Airlines has just put out a press release about how it’s enhancing inflight entertainment, and will soon allow AAdvantage members to redeem miles for inflight Wi-Fi. The press release talks about how American is offering free sponsored Wi-Fi to passengers.
Continue reading: American Airlines’ Free (Sponsored) Wi-Fi
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
How many miles will be required for how many "free" minutes? AA is NOT competitive with DL for in-flight entertainment. DL has free unlimited Wi-Fi and real-time TV. I flew 4 AA flights in early March 2024 and only one aircraft offered Wi-Fi for watching a commercial. It was only 20 continuous minutes. If you switch to a different app, the 20 minute clock keeps running.
Psss... reset your mac address, clear cookies, boom another free 20 minutes. You can do this on iOS devices (once per device) by using the "private wi-fi address" switch.
I have been using the free 20 minutes on all my flights since I found the free video. But yesterday's flight, didn't have the free video option, and I have ran into that issue before on one of my flights. So it's not a guarantee that you will have the free 20 minutes available.
This is so annoying. There is nothing new here and the 20-min ad-supported wifi offering is the weakest of any major carrier.
World Elite Mastercards issued in Canada come with Boingo, which provides $0 WiFi on American, without watching a video. This is one of those very rare cases where Canadians receive a value denied to Americans.
It seems like "free" wi-fi has become more important than safety. I was under the impression that an airline's main function is to get people safely from one place to another not provide wi-fi. But I guess that idea was mistaken.
The other point worth flagging here is how inconsistent (and sometimes ridiculous) AA's wifi pricing is - while UA and WN don't have free wifi, the $6 and $8 per flight, respectively, is far more reasonable to me.
so weird that a travel blog routinely covers the world's largest airline ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Screw AA. I dont know if I will pay $7, $9, $12, $17, $19, $25, $29 or $35 for wifi on AA.
I would have thought that free Wi-Fi would be a logical perk to include in elite status benefits.
In the nicest way possible
If you fly aa often, why haven’t you switched to t mobile already or why didn’t you with delta before that? I haven’t paid for WiFi on a plane in a long time
They’re cheaper and have better international plans to boot
What's American and Alaskan gonna do when people expect free wifi after delta and united do it?
They're all gonna do it! Add 5 bucks (or whatever slightly above break even will be) to every ticket price... It's basically what it'll come down to.
I have unlimited free wifi including streaming on American. It's included with my T-Mobile plan, has been for quite a while.