When you take your next Qantas flight, there’s a chance you could strike gold and be connected to the internet thanks to the NBN’s Sky Muster satellite service. Today marks the day when the first Australian flight to the service. Starting with the first aircraft today, the rollout strategy is fairly aggressive, with CEO Alan Joyce confirming the entire Qantas fleet will be WiFi-enabled by the end of 2018.
If you’ve ever used in-flight WiFi overseas, you’ll know the speed is enough to check emails, or your latest social updates, but Qantas are pitching this as one of the fastest airline internet connections in the world. The new, modern technology on-board to communicate with the satellites should deliver enough capacity for hundreds of passengers to be streaming live entertainment from Netflix, Stand, Foxtel and more.
Being connected at this speed, really will change how we think about flying. Until now, most of us feel disconnected and unproductive when in the air, but if you find yourself on a connected plane, you’ll be free to continue working, learning, entertaining or communicating with people 30,000 feet below you.
Modern customers expect modern connectivity and they don’t expect an extra price on their tickets. Thankfully Qantas are offering this in-flight Wi-Fi free to passengers. This will give them a major competitive advantage over the competition and certainly influence the airline selected by businesses when sending employees interstate.
A connected plane can also help pilots avoid turbulence with real-time weather information and send information generated by the plane engines to engineers on the ground.
Eventually, Qantas plans to extend wi-fi to its international and QantasLink aircraft, which just could make the prospect of a long-haul flight to London rather appealing.
Update
Don’t worry about how you’ll know if your plane has Qantas WiFi or not, you’ll know.
No missing the Wi-Fi here pic.twitter.com/cW72aSFs5J
— Angus Kidman (@gusworldau) April 7, 2017
Update 2
It looks like the new service (in beta) isn’t without issue.
Since we hit the skies this is what the Qantas Wi-Fi experience has mostly been like so far pic.twitter.com/CyvxWWXJxv
— Angus Kidman (@gusworldau) April 7, 2017
Update 3
Looks like people are successfully tweeting during the initial flight with Qantas WiFi.
NetFlix, Excel and a view of the ocean – all on QANTAS WiFi @Qantas #qfwifi pic.twitter.com/TfMdgq6vw0
— davidmwilliams (@davidmwilliams) April 7, 2017
Initial speed test results are in aboard the first #QFwifi flight pic.twitter.com/7zWlYtsIXH
— Executive Traveller (@Exec_Traveller) April 7, 2017
https://twitter.com/melissahoyer/status/850154316111466499
