British Airways Now Offering WiFi on Board
British Airways is finally rolling off WiFi connection on its long-haul flights, at least on three planes.
The airline company announced in a blog post that it is powering some of its flights with high-speed WiFi, with a promise that in two years, this will be expanded to 118 aircrafts.
"British Airways has launched its multi-million-pound investment plan to benefit its customers with more choice and quality for all," said Carolina Martinoli, British Airways director of brand and customer experience.
As only three of its planes have this feature at the moment, passengers would just have to hope for the best with every BA flight they take. If they are on the right plane, they would be advised that WiFi is available.
The WiFi availability will be available in two options — Browse and Stream.
Browse includes basic webpage surfing, the use of messaging applications like WhatsApp and Viber, as well as social media like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Rate starts at £4.99 ($7) for the first hour, at a minimum of 250 Kbps.
Meantime, the Stream option offers more advanced browsing for music and entertainment, like Netflix, Spotify, and YouTube. This upgrade costs £7.99 ($11) and would allow customers to use a minimum of 1 Mbps of internet speed.
There are separate, still unannounced, packages for those hoping to connect for four hours or for the whole flight.
For security, WiFi will be available around 10 minutes into the flight, or once the plane is safely up at around 10,000 feet.
For a limited time, a partnership with Visa also allows British Airways customers to get the new service for free for the first hour, that is for both browsing and streaming.
Currently, WiFi connectivity is limited to BA's long-haul flights, but it promised that this would also be available for short-haul flights in the near future. By 2019, the company is positive that at least 90 percent of its fleet would have WiFi on board.
