Here’s an exciting and long overdue announcement…
In this post:
American will offer free Wi-Fi for AAdvantage members
American Airlines has announced that it will be introducing free inflight Wi-Fi as of January 2026, sponsored by AT&T. Free Wi-Fi will be available exclusively for members of the carrier’s AAdvantage program, and the airline highlights how it will offer free inflight connectivity on more planes than any other domestic carrier.
This will be offered on all aircraft equipped with Viasat and Intelsat high speed satellite connectivity, accounting for roughly 90% of the fleet. This means that many wide body jets won’t be offering free Wi-Fi. That’s fair enough, since Delta is struggling with actually offering its promised free Wi-Fi in many long haul markets due to satellite availability, and that has now been delayed by up to two years.
Here’s how Heather Garboden, American’s Chief Customer Officer, describes this development:
“Our customers greatly value staying connected while in the air, whether communicating with friends, getting work done, checking in on social media or streaming their favorite subscription services. We’ve been working diligently to outfit our aircraft with best-in-class high-speed Wi-Fi and together with AT&T are proud to offer those services at no cost to our most loyal customers.”
In recent weeks, American has started trialing offering free Wi-Fi on select flights, to assess customer take rates for inflight Wi-Fi, evaluating provider and aircraft capacity, and measuring the impact to customer satisfaction via NPS scores.
What an exciting development for American passengers!
In recent years, American has really lost its edge when it comes to inflight connectivity, so I’d consider this to be a hugely positive announcement. Let me provide some background…
Going back several years, American was the best of the “big three” airlines when it came to inflight Wi-Fi. The airline had Viasat Wi-Fi on the most jets, meaning that passengers had access to fast Wi-Fi. Delta and United also charged for Wi-Fi, but had considerably worse systems for inflight connectivity. Over time, the situation changed:
- Delta is in the process of rolling out free Wi-Fi throughout its fleet, made possible by the widespread installation of Viasat Wi-Fi
- United has announced that it’s introducing free Wi-Fi as of this year, as it installs Starlink Wi-Fi
Currently Delta beats American, since it also has fast Wi-Fi, but it’s free. Meanwhile United was going to beat American once it had Starlink, but it’ll be years before that’s fully rolled out (though United is making progress with introducing Viasat Wi-Fi, seemingly as an interim solution).
When it comes to American, the issue hasn’t just been that the airline charges for Wi-Fi, but also how much the airline has been charging. For example, Alaska, Southwest, and United, all charge $8 per segment for Wi-Fi, while American’s pricing is all over the place, and sometimes costs $20+ per segment.
American hasn’t even been offering free inflight messaging, aside from the T-Mobile partnership. That’s wild because:
- It’s something that even United offers at this point, with its inferior connectivity system
- American promised several years back that it would introduce free inflight messaging, but then backtracked
Going back as recently as several months ago, American CEO Robert Isom went on record as saying that the airline had no plans to introduce free Wi-Fi. Clearly we’re finally seeing management change its strategy. American has been greatly lagging both Delta and United when it comes to profitability. For so long, the airline thought it didn’t really need to compete with those airlines on product, but rather, that it could be profitable through its (primarily domestic) network.
That whole strategy just hasn’t materialized, and there are some major changes at the airline, whereby management realizes the company needs to become more competitive, and focus on the passenger experience.
Look, I don’t think we’re suddenly going to see American retrofit narrow body planes with TVs, or massively improve the soft product, but I think the airline will no longer cut corners in areas where it’s so glaringly obvious that the airline needs to compete. With both Delta and United pledging to offer free Wi-Fi, it has been clear that American needs to do this as well, which is why we’re seeing this change.
Bottom line
American has announced plans to introduce free inflight Wi-Fi as of January 2026. This will be available for AAdvantage members on aircraft equipped with Viasat and Intelsat connectivity, which includes a vast majority of narrow body jets. Competitively, American needed to do this, so I’m happy to see the company is actually following through on this…
What do you make of American introducing free Wi-Fi?
Why the wait until January? That’s ridiculous.
And when do the IFE monitors return to the seatbacks ?
Lucky - dropped an s in there
"In recent weeks, American has started trialing offering free Wi-Fi on select flights, to asses customer take rates for inflight Wi-Fi, evaluating provider and aircraft capacity, and measuring the impact to customer satisfaction via NPS scores."
Seems like Tim's alter ego accounts didn't make it through.
Wifi seems to be a very itching subject for him. Especially when Delta doesn't work transpacific but fluff about Delta working somewhere irrelevant.
It's the beginning of the premium pivot
American Airlines should offer free Wi-Fi NOW for first-class and business-class passengers on all transcontinental flights, similar to Cathay Pacific's free Wi-Fi for first-class and business-class passengers on all transpacific flights.
For those of us with free wifi through the T-Mobile partnership, what happens? I assume that will be terminated.
Will they auto cancel subscribers to WiFi plans or allow those to continue indefinitely? They are already difficult to cancel.
Can put a man on the moon decades ago but still can’t get free wifi on airplanes in 2025.
Airlines used to charge for movies, customers expect services like WiFi as well.
“Sponsored by AT&T” mean that American is only doing this because they found someone to sell our data to in order to cover the cost?
that's the case when you use Google or "free" delta wifi as well.
Did you think Delta was a sanctuary of data privacy?
…. one has to smile at the privacy comments, for even Ben’s website has been ‘sold out to the data devil’.
Thankfully, VPN’s, Safari and DuckDuckGo are keeping the data miners in their places.
not sure how to take you seriously, Aero, when you consistently switch between guest and member.
Easy to explain Max, sometimes I login and sometimes I don’t.
Nothing sinister ’onest guv!
I have to admit that I hadn’t even considered that occurrence.
you're the first "Brit" I've encountered trying to type with a Dick Van Dyke styled cockney accent.
Interesting style.
It's about time
Though I do have to say, it's sort of surreal how much positive publicity United gets for "free wifi" when they don't have any free wifi and won't for years, much less high speed wifi on nearly any plane.
With Delta, again... promises galore while they simultaneously onboard and fly aircraft both narrow body and wide body with no wifi whatsoever. Delta is the only US airline where a 14 hour...
It's about time
Though I do have to say, it's sort of surreal how much positive publicity United gets for "free wifi" when they don't have any free wifi and won't for years, much less high speed wifi on nearly any plane.
With Delta, again... promises galore while they simultaneously onboard and fly aircraft both narrow body and wide body with no wifi whatsoever. Delta is the only US airline where a 14 hour flight to Sydney consistently has zero wifi much less longer to South Africa all the while getting a free pass for having the 717s with ridiculous planning for any kind of decent wifi whatsoever with delayed and delayed installation timelines.
Marketing is great and done very well by carriers that don't have fast wifi on their fleet, like AA, but I've never understood why bloggers tend to give them a free pass on the issue of horrible planning regarding any high speed wifi whatsoever.
But it's nice that AA is doing what they should've done years ago, provide "free" high speed wifi as a competitive advantage in response to removing seatback screens.
Finally. They had no choice. They were going to be the only US carrier to still charge for this, even though until recently, they had the most reliable Wifi and had for a long time. The game has changed.
WN and AS still charge...for now