Why Does Airplane WiFi Work So Badly?

Besides flying cheaper, faster, and more comfortably, one of the most requested benefits among passengers is the onboard WiFi. The problem is that the quality of the connection leaves much to be desired. Is it a maneuver by the airlines to make us pay more? To be honest, not exactly. Providing an Internet signal to a plane flying at 10,000 meters altitude and more than 800 kilometers per hour is extremely complicated, and even if all conditions are met, it may not be enough.

If you decide to visit a McDonald's, Starbucks, Burger King, or another similar establishment, you'll likely get access to relatively stable free WiFi (captive portal aside). Now imagine that instead of enjoying a burger or a coffee, you have a several-hour flight ahead, with horrible food and screaming children. Browsing on your mobile device would be the ideal escape, but...

...the WiFi doesn't work, or it does so terribly. At this point, anyone would say "we are in 2019 and they can't make WiFi work," but keeping a plane connected at high speed and 10,000 meters altitude is not simple. If you want to know why airplane WiFi works so poorly (or doesn't work at all), check this out:

Airplane WiFi: Towers and Satellites

There are two connectivity paths for a plane: ground towers (Air-To-Ground, or "ATG"), or a satellite network. ATG has an important advantage in terms of latency, but tower availability is erratic at best, and if your flight must cross the ocean, there's nothing to do: no towers, no WiFi. What about satellites? The dominant technologies are Ku band (K-Under) between 12 and 18 GHz, and Ka band (K-Above) between 26.5 and 40 GHz. Regardless of their benefits and weaknesses, one thing is certain: both are faster than ATG.

So What's the Problem?

Actually, there are four: the airline, the type of plane, the WiFi provider, and the region we're going to (or coming from). The battle to cut costs is eternal, and some companies simply decide not to offer WiFi to their passengers. Others enable it for free (JetBlue), and then there are those that sell daily, monthly, or annual passes (Delta). However, an airline offering WiFi doesn't mean it will be available on your flight. Planes need to be prepared for reception (either ATG or satellite), a slow and costly process (words that are mortal enemies of any airline).

So we get to the providers. Speed calculation is done per passenger, causing significant differences between one name and another. As if that weren't enough, contracts tend to be very long, and all hardware is proprietary, so if an airline wants to switch providers, it must do the same with the antennas on the planes, servers, and the rest of the infrastructure. Finally, we have the routes. For some airlines (e.g., Hawaiian Airlines), offering WiFi is a titanic task because they cross territory without antennas, so it falls very low on the priority list.

That said, airlines are reluctantly recognizing the importance of WiFi on their flights. The London School of Economics believes that airplane WiFi will be a 130 billion dollars by 2035. An Inmarsat Aviation survey reveals that 67 percent of passengers would be willing to reschedule their flights with an airline that offers quality internet. In other words, WiFi could be the difference between a successful airline and another following the path of the dinosaurs.