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When American Airlines announced that it was activating free Wi-Fi, my inbox and DMs immediately flooded with questions about why American was still charging for internet.
Well, the airline’s free Wi-Fi rollout isn’t happening all at once. Instead, it started on Jan. 6 and won’t be fully complete until the spring.
Until then, whether you’ll pay for Wi-Fi depends entirely on which aircraft you’re flying. Here’s the most up-to-date breakdown of when American planes will actually feature free internet.
American free Wi-Fi timeline
American has two key milestones for turning on free internet access.
- By Jan. 23:
- 85% of narrowbody and dual-class regional jets
- By early spring:
- All remaining narrowbody and dual-class regional planes
- Select widebody jets
Note that free Wi-Fi will only be available on:
- Mainline aircraft equipped with Intelsat or Viasat, which includes all single-aisle planes and select widebodies.
- Regional jets equipped with Intelsat.
Why isn’t the rollout instant?
Perhaps the most frustrating part of the rollout is that, as of Jan. 6, American Airlines has eliminated free Wi-Fi for T-Mobile subscribers. (That’s likely because AT&T is sponsoring the new free fleet-wide internet access.)
So, unless you’re flying one of the select jets that currently feature free Wi-Fi, you’ll need to pay up for internet access. If your plane features free internet, all you need to do is sign in to your AAdvantage account to get connected.
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It’s not clear why American couldn’t just enable free Wi-Fi with a simple over-the-air software update on eligible jets (the same way it immediately turned off free Wi-Fi for T-Mobile users).
But on the flip side, at least it isn’t dragging the rollout out over multiple months or years, like Delta did when it first launched free Wi-Fi.
When all is said and done, the Fort Worth-based carrier will go from offering no free Wi-Fi to having more free-connected aircraft than any airline in the world.
It’s just too bad that America didn’t go with a low-earth-orbit satellite provider, like Starlink, for internet connectivity. Because once there are 200 devices on a single flight using Viasat to access the internet, the bandwidth experience is likely to be downgraded. (Just compare the internet experience on a Delta flight nowadays vs. before the free Wi-Fi rollout.)
American jets without free Wi-Fi
Even though most American planes feature Viasat or Intelsat, several jets will not offer free Wi-Fi on American.
This includes:
- All Boeing 777-200ERs
- All Boeing 777-300ERs
- All Embraer E145s (don’t offer any Wi-Fi)
- Select Boeing 787-8 Dreamliners (that feature Panasonic Wi-Fi) with the following registrations
- N800AN
- N801AC
- N802AN
- N803AL
- N804AN
- N805AN
- N806AA
- N807AA
- N808AN
- N809AA
- N810AN
- N811AB
- N812AA
- N813AN
- N814AA
- N815AA
- N816AA
- N817AN
- N818AL
- N819AN
- Select Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners (that feature Panasonic Wi-Fi) with the following registrations
- N820AL
- N821AN
- N822AN
- N823AN
- N824AN
- N825AA
- N826AN
- N827AN
- N828AA
- N829AN
- N830AN
- N831AA
- N832AA
- N833AA
- N834AA
- N835AN
- N836AA
- N837AN
- N838AA
- N839AA
- N840AN
- N841AN
- Any regional jet currently featuring air-to-ground Wi-Fi
- All CRJ-700, CRJ-900, Embraer E170, and Embraer E175 jets will be upgraded to (free) Intelsat Wi-Fi over the coming months.
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If I was looking at it correctly (and maybe I wasn’t!), I believe it’s even simpler for the 788s/789s if you only have the seat map to go by: 788s with Concept D seats and 789s with 30J all have the Panasonic and will charge. Super Diamond 788s and the new 789Ps will have free wifi.
The problem is 788s is you can’t look at seat map to determine Concept D vs. Super Diamond. For 789s, it’s easy. If it’s a 789, you have Panasonic. If you have a 789P, then it’s Viasat (and free)