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Wireless Networking

Delta To Make Its In-Flight Wi-Fi Free (theverge.com) 52

Delta Air Lines is reportedly planning to make in-flight Wi-Fi free on a "significant portion" of its planes starting early next year, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. The Verge reports: The company has reportedly been running tests where anyone who's a member of its free-to-join SkyMiles rewards program gets free access to the internet while in the air, but it seems as if that perk may become much more widely available soon. Delta is expected to roll out the free Wi-Fi to an increasing number of planes in its fleet throughout 2023, according to the Journal.
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Delta To Make Its In-Flight Wi-Fi Free

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  • by Xaphiero ( 4646891 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2022 @06:43PM (#63146154)
    So, is free wifi on Delta supposed to distract us from how horrible it is to be jammed into a cattle car seating situation?
    • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2022 @06:51PM (#63146168)

      Happily, no! Coincident with this expansion of access to free in-flight wifi, Delta also announced that seating is a thing of the past! Going forward, passengers will be efficiently stacked like cordwood on its planes.

    • This. Back in the day when seats were actually comfortable, Delta had the worst most uncomfortable seats in the business. On the only flight I took with them, my knees felt almost bruised from being jammed into the seat in front of me. I'm just under six feet and I was in good shape then, so I should have had plenty of room. Nope. I can't imagine what it is like now. I have no interest in flying anywhere, really, anymore. It just isn't a pleasant experience at all.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

      So, is free wifi on Delta supposed to distract us from how horrible it is to be jammed into a cattle car seating situation?

      Why are you jammed into a cattle car seating situation? Could it be that you value the cost savings more than the extra space offered to you?

      It's an interesting thing to complain about, a situation you put yourself into voluntarily. You could just fly business class. It would still be cheaper than flying economy class in the 80s/90s.

  • Is it WiFi free? Or free Wi-Fi?

  • Smart move. Having internet access is better than any in-flight entertainment system they can possibly provide.

    • No it's not. Free wifi on airlines is about as much fun as watching Youtube on a 56k baud modem.

      Bring your own entertainment on a flight. Nothing an airline offers you shared by hundreds of other passengers is any good. In fact the best thing I ever saw in a plane was on a TAP flight. They had in seat tablet clips and power outlets. Perfect. Just get my Surface and click it into the back of the seat and happily watch high quality movies downloaded early at a quality far higher than even 1st class seating on

  • by az-saguaro ( 1231754 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2022 @01:14AM (#63146908)

    Quite a few years ago, I read an article in the Wall Street Journal that always stuck with me. A big Manhattan high rise office building was getting ever more complaints about slow elevators. The owners had to face the possibility of putting in expensive new elevators. They hired a consultant to study the problem. That guy simply hung out in the lobbies and foyers and watched and interviewed the people who were riding those elevators. It turned out that people were just bored while waiting, and the waits seemed too long. So, he recommended that instead of spending millions on new elevators, that they spend a few thousand dollars on wall hangings, pictures, magazines to be placed in those elevator lobbies. They did, and the complaints went away.

    Air travel completely sucks. Adding internet service for everyone could be a very simple and inexpensive way to distract the sardines. The measure of success will be if customer complaints and rowdy customer incidents go down, and even further if customer satisfaction scores go up. There have been reports lately of airlines working with SpaceX or other orbital internet companies to expand inflight internet, so it seems like the time is right to make this transition.

    It will be interesting to see if the airlines do a good job of supporting the idea, by putting chargers or outlets at each seat, making earphones readily available, etc. Those services remain rather spotty on the airlines I fly.

  • If you have to give your info to their marketing machine, it's not free.
  • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2022 @07:35AM (#63147342)

    And gave up because sharing limited bandwidth with 300 other passengers is about as fun as a root canal.

    • My first thought was that this would be like hotels, where the free service is effectively unusable but one can upgrade for a fee.
  • Spirit to charge extra for taking more than one breath every 2 minutes while in flight and for every word asking a question while at the gate.
  • I'm assuming this is because they're moving to Starlink, and their bandwidth costs fell through the floor compared with the air-to-ground cellular or unholy overpriced satellite solutions they were previously using? Amazing what a little bit of real competition can do.

  • Good start, but this is on "select" flights, not network wide...

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