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Proving that we are truly entering the golden age of inflight connectivity, United Airlines today announced that passengers will now be able to purchase in-flight Wi-Fi with frequent-flier miles. But it won’t be cheap.
United says a new web portal – accessible to passengers on its planes – was launched today aboard select flights. As Reuters reported, the service will expand to all of the carrier’s services by early 2016, and then eventually onto United Express regional routes in the coming year as well. A United spokesperson tells Road Warrior Voices:
“Testing is going well today. We expect most of the domestic mainline fleet to have the new portal and the mileage option by the end of Q1 and the international fleet to have the new portal by mid-year.”
But how much will it cost you? Citing existing contracts in play before the company decided to implement the miles-based Wi-Fi option, United says that – for now – supply and demand will factor into pricing. The company just doesn’t have the technological ability to provide every single customer on board with high-speed internet at once. So as more people attempt to connect, the speeds will diminish. To discourage that, pricing will rise as more passengers attempt to log in. If this sounds familiar, it’s because it is also the premise behind Uber’s almost universally decried surge pricing.
United partner Deutsche Lufthansa AG may provide a financial model for the expanded option: the airline currently charges customers 3,500 miles for an hour of Wi-Fi service, or about €9 ($9.60).
While the service won’t be free – again, United is being unusually forthcoming about its existing Wi-Fi provider contracts – the ability to use miles to purchase in-flight Wi-Fi may be enough to make passengers hang in there as competitors like JetBlue and Virgin try their hands at offering the service for free.