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Monthly Airplane Wi-Fi Reliability Report Card: July 2019

ByEdward Pizzarello
a hand holding a phone with a wifi symbol on the screen

This is my seventh month recording my airplane Wi-Fi stats during my business and leisure travel.  As I’ve mentioned in the past, reliable airplane Wi-Fi is the most important element for me on a business flight.

Here’s how the year has shaped up so far:

July 2019 Wi-Fi Scorecard

United Airlines: 4 working flights out of 5 (80%)

This was one my best for United wi-fi connectivity.  I had one flight that probably could have gone either way on working or not.  It was a 4-hour flight with about an hour of down time.  Since I was just working on e-mail, I slid that one in the win column for United.  I sincerely hope this is a trend.

Air Canada: 1 working flights out of 1 (100%)

Air Canada has older Wi-Fi on some of their fleet, including on this flight.  Web pages weren’t loading spectacularly well, but it was perfectly fine for e-mail the entire flight.

YTD Stats:

United Airlines: 26 working flights out of 47 (55%)

Southwest Airlines: 1 working flight out of 2 (50%)

Air Canada: 2 working flight out of 2 (100%)

Delta Air Lines: 5 working flight out of 5 (100%)

American Airlines: 5 working flights out of 6 (83%)

Alaska Airlines: o working flights out of 1 (0%)

Private Plane: 2 working flights out of 2 (100%)

Qantas: 1 working flight out of 1 (100%)

Total: 42 working flights out of 66 (64%)

The Final Two Pennies

Right around the time I started to seriously think about moving even more business away from United, things perked up in July,  It’s by far the most reliable month of Wi-Fi I’ve had on the airline.  That still left me without Wi-Fi on one flight and an hour of down time on another.  But, improvement.

I’m not entirely sure where the line is for moving more business away from United because of the Wi-Fi issue.  I’ve flown Frontier and really don’t mind the in-flight experience, though I do recommend the extra legroom seats for the full-sized tray table to work on.  They don’t have any plans to add Wi-Fi to their planes, the single biggest reason I don’t fly them more often.  Even with a solid month on United, my success rate in 2019 is 55%.  47 flights on United is a pretty decent sample size.  I’ll surely hope the trend continues upwards.

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