travel

Best airlines in the world for WiFi

January 16, 2016

A new report lists the best airlines in the world for WiFi. – AFP/Relaxnews pic, January 16, 2016.If in-flight WiFi is an indispensable amenity for you when you fly, best book on Delta, United or American which have been named some of the leading carriers when it comes to connectivity in the clouds.

According to a new report on the "Global State of In-flight Wifi" released by Routehappy, flyers today have a chance of finding WiFi on 36% of all available seat miles (ASMs) worldwide – a far cry from just one year ago.

Available seat miles is a measure of an airline flight's passenger carrying capacity and is equal to the number of seats available multiplied by the number of miles or km flown.

In their findings, authors note that US carriers are the leaders in the this area, offering at least one chance of scoring WiFi on 78% of ASMs system-wide, compared to non-US airlines which offer a chance on 24% of ASMs worldwide.

The top three spots on the list of airlines that offer the most in-flight connectivity are also occupied by US airlines, with Delta, United and American at the leaderboard, followed by Emirates and Southwest.

Virgin America holds bragging rights to being the only US airline with WiFi on nearly all of its flights.

When it comes to long-haul flying, however, Emirates and Lufthansa offer the highest odds of finding in-flight WiFi, while the most connected long-haul route is New York to Dubai.

At the other end, London to Hong Kong was found to be the least connected.

For the report, analysts looked at worldwide flights on a typical mid-week travel day operated by 60 airlines that offer WiFi.

While WiFi connectivity was available on less than 1% of US flights last year, that number is 6% worldwide today.

Routehappy calls itself a product differentiation platform for air travel. – AFP/Relaxnews, January 16, 2016.