JetBlue Airways and Delta Air Lines are the only two U.S. airlines that currently offer free Wifi on flights. What is this? JetBlue Airways was the first American airline to offer free Wifi on all flights for all passengers. From takeoff to landing, you can enjoy Fly-Fi, the airline's free Wifi service.
Delta and Virgin America tied for the fastest in-flight Wi-Fi at speeds up to 15 Mbps. If you're simply looking for the fastest in-flight Wi-Fi, go for Delta or Virgin America. However, while both these airlines offer in-flight Wi-Fi up to 15 Mbps, they vary in price enormously.
The Delta Domestic Day Pass offers 24 hours of unlimited Internet on all Gogo® equipped Delta flights in the contiguous US 48 and Alaska. It's a great value if you're flying domestically for more than three hours within a 24 hour period on Delta Wi-Fi equipped aircraft.
“It can cost millions of dollars just to equip one airplane with high-speed internet,” says Ryan Ewing, the founder of the Airline Geeks blog. “It's certainly not cheap. It depends a lot [more] on the actual hardware than it does on just flipping a switch and going, 'Okay, can we make it free? '”
The three best airlines based on the in-flight experience are JetBlue, Delta and Southwest, according to NerdWallet analysis. And while our top three picks offer Wi-Fi, it's free only with our winner: JetBlue.
Who is eligible for free Wi-Fi on Delta? On eligible flights, free Wi-Fi is available to all Delta SkyMiles members. Anyone can instantly join SkyMiles for free at this link. There's no need to actually credit your flight to SkyMiles or have your SkyMiles number on your record.
Buy Wi-Fi passes in advancePrepurchasing one-hour passes isn't really going to save you much, if anything. But if you're on the market for an all-day flight pass, you can start planning on saving some cash by purchasing it before your flight.
Delta has spent more than $1 billion upgrading its planes to offer free Wi-Fi to customers. The airline uses Viasat, one of the leading providers of satellite internet, to deliver Wi-Fi on board. CNBC got an inside look at how Delta is working to upgrade over 1,200 planes by 2024.
Signing out of cloud services before you sign in to the in-flight Wi-Fi is better because they command a lot of bandwidth. If your Wi-Fi connectivity is slow or intermittent (which happens to be the case for most in-flight Wi-Fi services), you might want to disable services that make your Wi-Fi slower temporarily.