THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
nationthailand

Airlines offer free in-flight Wi-Fi

Airlines offer free in-flight Wi-Fi

A survey carried out last year found that more than half of all airline passengers would rather have Wi-Fi on their next flight than a meal, Thaivisa website reported.

However, despite the demand, most airlines have actually been pretty slow to introduce wifi onto their planes. 
And while passengers on internal flights in the US, for example, have access to wifi, outside the US most of us have been left disconnected
And on the occasion when wifi is available at 30,00ft it can often be quite expensive.
But if you’re a budget conscious traveller or just someone who would rather keep up to date with their social media accounts or the latest new than watch some movie you’ve already seen a dozen times, there are a handful of airlines that offer onboard wifi free of charge.
And one of them is from Thailand.
Travel comparison site letsflycheaper.com have released an infographic showing the airlines which currently offer complimentary wifi.
Leading the way for free in-flight wifi is Europe’s Norwegian, which offers free wifi on most of its fleet in Europe and on flights to the US and Caribbean, as well as on some other long haul flights.
JetBlue Airways, who recently announced it had become the world’s first airline to offer free wifi on all flights and is available to passengers as soon as they board the aircraft until it lands, as opposed to many operators whose wifi is only available when the plane is cruising at altitude.
However, the service is only available in US.
Most of the other airlines that offer free wifi, do so but with some restrictions.
Air China, for example, who have been offering free wifi since 2014 and which offers download speeds of up to 30Mbps, but the service is only available on domestic flights and can only be used on a tablet or laptop – not a smartphone.
China Eastern Airlines also offer free wifi but passengers are limited to 258 yuan [approx 1,300 baht]worth of use on both domestic and international flights.
Qatar Airways offers free wifi but only for the first 15 minutes of your flight, any longer than that and it has to be purchased, while Emirates free wifi is limited to a measly 10MB of data.
Domestically, Nok Air are the only airline in Thailand to offer free wifi, although it is only available on two aircraft.
The company says it offers in-flight download speeds of up to 8Mbps and upload speeds of 768Mbps, adding that access to some video and audio streaming services may be limited, as is other high bandwidth activities.
Turkish Airlines also offer free wifi but only in business class or for economy passengers who are members of its Elite or Elite Plus rewards program.

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