Southwest Airlines has just announced plans to permanently offer free Wi-Fi, which sure is an exciting development. However, there’s a bit of a catch.
In this post:
Southwest will offer free Wi-Fi as of October 24, 2025
As of October 24, 2025, Southwest Airlines will begin offering unlimited free Wi-Fi for all Rapid Rewards members, in partnership with T-Mobile. With more than 800 aircraft, Southwest will be the largest domestic airline to implement free Wi-Fi on every flight this year.
All Rapid Rewards customers, regardless of their wireless provider, will be able to access free Wi-Fi for the duration of the flight, with no limits on bandwidth or the number of devices that can be used.
Here’s how Tony Roach, Southwest’s Chief Customer & Brand Officer, describes this:
“We are focused on making sure our Customers have a great experience from the time they book a flight to the time they reach their destination. We’re pleased to partner with T-Mobile to bring free WiFi to all Rapid Rewards Members. This is part of our ongoing commitment to elevate the cabin experience, with free WiFi being just one of the many enhancements Customers will see in the months ahead.”
This year, we’ve seen Southwest run a couple of trials of offering free Wi-Fi, so it’s nice to see this become permanent. For context, Southwest currently charges $8 per device for Wi-Fi, so those are some nice savings.
This is a great development, mostly, I think
Southwest has had a lot of bad news lately when it comes to the passenger experience, as it has eliminated just about everything that differentiates it from the competition. So it’s nice to see a positive announcement, for once. In fairness, offering free Wi-Fi isn’t something that’s done as a charitable gesture, but instead, there’s a business reason for doing so, even beyond the competitive element.
The monetization of Wi-Fi has changed, in the sense that as it becomes free, it’s about increasing loyalty program sign-ups, since those customers are easier to monetize. You can sell a customer a credit card or vacation package more easily if they belong to your loyalty program.
Just looking at the US airline industry, JetBlue has offered free Wi-Fi for years, Delta offers free Wi-Fi on most flights, Hawaiian offers free Wi-Fi on most flights, American will offer free Wi-Fi as of early 2026, United is offering free Wi-Fi as it installs Starlink. and Alaska will offer free Wi-Fi when it introduces Starlink.
So while this is great, there is one major challenge, which is the bandwidth the airline currently has available. Southwest historically had Anuvu Wi-Fi, and it has both a legacy system and an upgraded system. Now the airline is starting to introduce Viasat Wi-Fi.
With Viasat, the bandwidth is there to offer free Wi-Fi, while the Anuvu system continues to be the issue. With the airline offering free Wi-Fi on planes with the legacy system, I have to imagine that the speeds will likely be horrendous. They bordered on unusable even without Wi-Fi being free, and obviously this makes the situation even worse.
Bottom line
As of October 24, 2025, Southwest Airlines will start offering free Wi-Fi for all Rapid Rewards members fleetwide. This is a great development, though the catch is that not all of Southwest’s planes have all that much bandwidth, and therefore you can expect Wi-Fi to be virtually unusable.
Regardless, it’s pretty cool to see how quickly the US airline industry has adapted to offering free Wi-Fi, as that’s awesome for consumers.
What do you make of Southwest introducing free Wi-Fi for Rapid Rewards members?
As long as you can send messages and do some email, I think it is okay. People don't expect to play games while on the airplane wifi....
Anuvu got an upgrade last month from two dedicated GEO satellites, see https://runwaygirlnetwork.com/2025/08/anuvu-microgeo-satellites-2/ anecdotal reports are that the Anuvu planes have been much better and faster now.
In addition to degrading the quality of the internet service, which was already the worst among the majors, free internet is one less benefit to holding the Biz card. So cardholders will have the opportunity to pay more for less.
Totally agree, WN is really doing its best to push me away. If they mess with Companion Pass there really will be no reason for me to stick around