Older planes like the Boeing 747 have WiFi, while a brand-new aircraft like the 787 Dreamliner, which features United's latest cabin design, does not. Despite having the greatest number of partners, however, the majority of the carrier's fleet doesn't offer internet at all. United, for example, offers service from Gogo, Panasonic or ViaSat, depending on the aircraft you fly. Also, an antenna on the bottom means you can only get online when your plane's in the air satellites are connected while you're still on the ground.Īirlines may use a mix of any of the above networks. Still, while text or compressed images on a web page may load right away, larger files often take much longer to appear than they do with a satellite connection. Because the plane is much closer to these towers than it is to satellites in orbit, there's significantly less latency. These towers are similar to what your smartphone connects to on the ground, but with antennas that point up instead of out to the side.

The current version of Gogo, meanwhile, uses antennas mounted on the bottom, which communicate with a network of 160 cellphone towers positioned throughout North America. The biggest challenge is maintaining a connection as an aircraft barrels through the stratosphere at 600 miles per hour. You may notice this delay when loading a page for the first time, but it won't have any effect on video streaming, which stores a few seconds of video on your laptop or tablet in a process called buffering. The rotating antenna is mounted on the top of the plane, and the signal travels from the jet to a satellite orbiting some 22,000 miles above the Earth and back again in a bit over half a second. And while your roof-mounted dish is stationary, an airplane travels horizontally, vertically and at an angle, requiring a special antenna that rotates under its dome with every movement of the plane, or, in the case of Gogo, one installed just below the cargo hold.Īssuming a plane doesn't leave its coverage area, satellite services, such as Panasonic's eXConnect, Row 44's Ku-band solution or ViaSat's speedier Ka-band Exede, maintain a line-of-sight connection with the aircraft from the moment it leaves the gate to when it lands at its destination.

Regardless of whether the plane is pulling data from a tower on the ground or a satellite far above, it moves between cell sites or satellite beams throughout a flight, requiring frequent handoffs. The technology getting you online in the air is actually very straightforward, functioning in much the same way as it does when you're sitting at home. So, which airlines offer the best service and how can you sort what you'll have on board? Join us here as we explore the turbulent world of WiFi at 30,000 feet. But while some carriers offer service on many of their planes, few have it available fleet-wide, making it difficult to plan your travel around connectivity. Thousands of passengers flying above North America are online right now, watching adorable kittens meow on YouTube, reading up on their destinations or researching a new device right here on Engadget. Nearly all of the major US airlines now offer WiFi in the sky. If you play your cards right (and pack some noise-canceling headphones), your next cross-country haul could be a whole lot more pleasant, thanks to in-flight WiFi. Oh, and you have five hours left to go to LAX. There's a screaming baby two rows up the pages of the in-flight magazine are stuck together with someone else's chewing gum and the 9-inch overhead CRT is showing a 2-year-old episode of New Girl that you've already seen a half-dozen times - without sound, because you always end up in the seat with a broken headphone jack.

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