A couple of months ago, Cathay Pacific started offering free Wi-Fi to business class passengers. The airline has now extended this offering to its top tier frequent flyers.
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Cathay Pacific adds free business class Wi-Fi
As of September 2024, Cathay Pacific introduced free Wi-Fi in business class on all aircraft equipped with this service. Now as of November 2024, Cathay Pacific has also rolled this out to Diamond members of its frequent flyer program (though unfortunately not oneworld Emerald equivalents with other programs).
The airline has Wi-Fi service on all Airbus A350s and Airbus A321neos, with most (but not all) Boeing 777s and Airbus A330s also having connectivity.
For what it’s worth, earlier this year, Cathay Pacific first announced plans to make Wi-Fi free to more passengers. Then in June, the airline started trialing complimentary Wi-Fi on one Airbus A350, to see how the free service impacted usage patterns and speeds.
Cathay Pacific has been offering free Wi-Fi in first class for years, but that cabin is only available on a small percentage of aircraft. So it’s nice to see this now extended to business class and to select frequent flyers.
For those who don’t have access to free Wi-Fi, Cathay Pacific ordinarily charges $10-20 per flight for Wi-Fi with no data caps, with messaging passes being available at a lower cost.
Inflight Wi-Fi sure is getting competitive
Inflight Wi-Fi has come a long way in recent years, both in terms of bandwidth and in terms of cost and value. At first, it was exciting when an airline had Wi-Fi in the first place. Then we saw speeds start to improve, and now we’re seeing airlines investing in making Wi-Fi complimentary, at least in some form.
While many airlines still charge for Wi-Fi, some airlines have started offering free inflight messaging to all passengers, and free unlimited Wi-Fi to premium cabin passengers. For example, in Asia, Singapore Airlines now offers unlimited free Wi-Fi to all KrisFlyer members. Meanwhile All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines offer unlimited free Wi-Fi to all first and business class passengers.
Cathay Pacific’s issue is that the airline doesn’t exactly have high-speed Wi-Fi throughout much of its fleet, so bandwidth is a major limitation. The more the airline offers free Wi-Fi, the more people will use it, and the slower the speeds will be.
Hopefully Cathay Pacific can eventually work toward offering free Wi-Fi in lower cabins as well. However, the airline probably needs to update its Wi-Fi service before something like this could be extended to economy.
Bottom line
Cathay Pacific has introduced free Wi-Fi in business class and for Diamond members, so this service should now be available on all aircraft equipped with internet service. It’s always nice to see airlines increasingly making Wi-Fi free, so kudos to Cathay Pacific!
What do you make of Cathay Pacific adding free Wi-Fi in business class and for Diamond members?
I was on Cathay last week. LAX to HKG and back. Service was really spotty to HKG. Much better on the way back