Airplane Wi-Fi tends to be overly expensive, and if you’re taking transatlantic flights, you know that making hours-long trips with no internet connection at all is a special kind of punishment. Now, it might be about to get a little more bearable. If you’re flying American Airlines, at least.

American Airlines has announced that, through a new partnership with telecommunications giant AT&T, it would be offering a very important improvement for some users. Starting in January 2026, the airline plans to offer complimentary Wi-Fi access to members of its AAdvantage loyalty program on the vast majority of its flights. The service will be available across an estimated two million flights annually. Eligibility for the free service will, sadly, be restricted to passengers enrolled in the American Airlines AAdvantage program, making membership a prerequisite for access once the program launches. It’s not that hard to get into AAdvantage if you fly a lot with the airline, but it also means that if you fly sparingly you’ll probably still have to pay for Wi-Fi.

The complimentary Wi-Fi will be accessible on American Airlines aircraft equipped with high-speed satellite connectivity solutions provided by Viasat and Intelsat. At the time of the announcement, these antennas were installed on approximately 90% of the airline’s mainline fleet. And the company is also currently working on bringing those antennas to even more aircraft. The airline stated it is on schedule to equip over 500 regional jets with high-speed Wi-Fi capabilities by the end of 2025, so hopefully, by the time this is actually rolled out, a lot more airplanes will be capable of putting out this free Wi-Fi to users.

American Airlines had previously conducted a limited-duration test of complimentary Wi-Fi on select routes prior to this announcement. According to the airline, the results of this trial phase were positive, with system performance meeting or exceeding internal expectations regarding service strength and reliability under increased user load. This should theoretically be good news, since the free Wi-Fi shouldn’t harm performance and saturate the network for either AAdvantage users or regular users paying for Wi-Fi, but we’ll have to wait and see.

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Stay connected while in the air.

Heather Garboden, Chief Customer Officer at American Airlines, mentioned that “staying connected while in the air is highly valued by our customers, whether for communicating, working, accessing social media, or streaming entertainment.” Meanwhile, Jenifer Robertson, EVP & GM Mass Markets at AT&T, further added that “connectivity facilitates access to information and communication. We are partnering with American Airlines to extend connectivity options for people, even during air travel.”

A few airlines already have free Wi-Fi. Some of them are contingent on the airline’s loyalty program, like American Airlines’ offering, and some of them are free for all, like JetBlue or Hawaiian Airlines. Some airlines have even opted for partnerships with companies like Starlink. It has been a growing trend. Delta, itself, has offered free Wi-Fi for some of its passengers for a while now. It would be nice to see fully free Wi-Fi for everyone, but we gotta start somewhere, and this is a pretty good starting point. For one, I have paid as much as $40 on Wi-Fi for transatlantic flights, and while some airlines are way cheaper, free is always better.

We’ll need to wait until January to see this come to life, but depending on how much you fly, your next flight might have free Wi-Fi.

Source: American Airlines