No idea which 'rest of carriers' in mid 2025 you are referring to in this vague blanket statement, but have never had an issue on a dozen leading airlines. Even bankrupt old Thai now offer it free to all FF members from this month - and it was always free for Biz and First - for very many years.
If most leading carriers can get it to work seamlessly for ages, Qantas has zero excuse IMHO.
'Delighted to be Waiting and waiting' is a pretty lame acceptance of Qantas missing the boat on this basic necessity for any long haul carrier in 2025.
It certainly is the very major reason I chose not to make this 12K booking today, I was about to proceed with, and will not be alone in that view I am sure. There are endless options out there.
But even Thai still don’t have wifi on all aircraft. As I mentioned above for QR the claims of other carriers wifi status is somewhat questionable (ie the rollout is still in progress, as it is with QF)
As for only offering your own FF members free wifi, I think that’s a bit mean especially when you are in an alliance (including QF/EK) when those other passengers are loyal to your partners.
So yes, other carriers have had cough expensive wifi for ages. Who cares.
Unfortunately Qantas chose ViasSat3 that has continually faced launch issues (only one of the three sats has been launched, and it's significantly degraded in capacity). The constellation is now expected to complete in mid-2026.
Well in a competitive world, dump them, and sign up with the vendors who clearly CAN deliver in flight Wi-Fi globally to the many large carriers who have successfully offered Wi-Fi for MANY years.
It is not like there is just one vendor in this space. There are other tried and long proven systems to sign up for. In this day of 17-18 hour type flights they are selling, and cheerfully charging 5 figure tickets prices for them, they are in La La Land to be 'hoping' in a year or two 'something might happen.'
Sounds like the sadly laughable Australia Submarine fleet that has essentially not worked for decades.
Those pesky little things called contracts.These three ViaSat3 sats cost something like US$2.5bn to design build and launch, and you can guarantee customers are locked in fairly tight.
Much like we haven't seen anyone walk away from Boeing 777Xs orders despite the delays.
Thai Airways? In 2019 their ‘free wifi’ was a voucher for 20MB in first and business class. And then paid access was USD59 for the rest of the flight Review: Thai Airways A350 Business Class
2019 is only a couple of flying years ago (taking out the covid years). I still have plenty of those vouchers at home, unused.
Lufthansa and Swiss currently offer free ‘chat’ and message wifi, but hefty prices for anything else.
SQ currently doesn’t support streaming services.
I don’t think QF is that far behind in its offerings?
Have used SQ Wi-Fi to Seattle, Borneo, India and Europe in the past year or so, and works brilliantly for me. Type in your Business seat number, and all good, at zero cost. Fast and efficient.
Qantas it appears works not at all. Anywhere, and any speed, in any format. Which is WHAT this thread is about.
No idea why defending incompetence is so popular here?
Starlink only started their integration program in 2022. QF signed the Viasat contract in 2016. As of now, about 500 aircraft worldwide are fitted for Starlink, but the queue is at least 2,000 places long. It might be incompetence (I always think that when considering AJ or his acolytes), but this seems more like bad timing.
Even without covid, 6 years is nothing in aerospace development time.
Have used SQ Wi-Fi to Seattle, Borneo, India and Europe in the past year or so, and works brilliantly for me. Type in your Business seat number, and all good, at zero cost. Fast and efficient.
Qantas it appears works not at all. Anywhere, and any speed, in any format. Which is WHAT this thread is about.
No idea why defending incompetence is so popular here?
SQ says its wifi is specifically not available over India? (which is not specific to SQ of course, it applies to many if not all carriers.)
Personally I don’t want to spend AUD25 for wifi on SQ that only allows chat and basic browsing (per SQ’s own website), or up to AUD60 for wifi on carriers such as Thai.
Would much rather it be free! (and fast… if QF’s domestic offering is anything to go by. And VA’s too, provided you are platinum or in business class… when it’s working!)
Qf’s wifi does work over Australian airspace at the moment for their planes equipped with wifi. Again, fast and free. Which only leaves a couple hours at the end of flights to Asia. Which is time for the snack service anyway
Qf’s wifi does work over Australian airspace at the moment for their planes equipped with wifi. Again, fast and free. Which only leaves a couple hours at the end of flights to Asia. Which is time for the snack service anyway
Flew from SFO - SIN about a month ago and worked and streamed content online for pretty much the entire trip. There was only one spot where it droped out for a few minutes. Free to all KrisFlyers. I loved everything about that flight and airline.
Some carriers repeatedly promise WiFi paid or free depending in class of travel etc but regularly don’t adequately deliver for a myriad of reasons including faulty aircraft equipment, some aircraft types not fitted, poor implementation, hopelessly slow, only on some routes, not available over some countries, bugs in software, incompatibility with customer devices.
The last two o/s trips on 4 alleged full service different carriers was unable to connect or adequately use WiFi.
Yes QFi implementation is delayed due largely delays by the contracted supplier, however if their proposed solution works as well as the QFd solution they will be up there or better than many carriers implementations/policies.
However, making a post is probably wasting time as the op has a firm limited view of the facts.
Personally I don’t want to spend AUD25 for wifi on SQ that only allows chat and basic browsing (per SQ’s own website), or up to AUD60 for wifi on carriers such as Thai.
Is Business class, it has always been FREEEEEE. And for members in their FF plans (free to join) it is also FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
Low enough priced for you? And even if it were not free, to be paying the cost of a beer or two, for 14 hours of Wi-Fi, to be able to carry on business at 40,000 feet. is a no-brainer, for me anyway. And for lots of flyers.
At least these carriers have offered it for many years - Qantas has not, as they backed the wrong horse. This tech anchor will cost them many bookings, as I have voted with my wallet - tons of high class carriers for the same (or less) price offer it, and have done for many years. As they SHOULD in 2025, for goodness sakes.
It might be free, but on SQ’s own page it states it is not suitable for anything other than basic browsing or chat apps. It says it is not available for streaming content. Tried to use it a couple of times last year between SIN and Europe and vv and basically gave up.
So that takes me back to my original position, which is that I’d rather wait for something good than: (a) having free but basic wifi, or (b) highly expensive wifi that can stream.
So, in 24 hours you went from flying with QF on a direct flight at what appears a reasonable price, to bashing them and taking an indirect (and presumably much longer) flight, because you’ll be cut off from the net for a few hours. Whilst you may tell us that your time on the flight is valuable, it seems odd that your overall time is less so. I’d almost think you were trolling.
I'm struggling to understand the OPs need to be connected to do work. That means you're "talking" (via email chat, teams message not necessarily voice/video) in real time which is pretty implausible. The work day is 8 hours, plenty of people are going to deal with it if someone isn't available for a day to directly message back.
If you are that important that you need to be in constant contact via messaging then you're important enough to have an IT setup that allows offline working with synchronisation when you're back online. That means most of the work load could be done in flight, offline, without wifi. Sorry not buying the desparate need for wifi.
Spending $12,000 for coughpy qantas business is a much greater issue for mine.
They had the slow wifi, and it wasn’t free (even for “F”)
I don’t see the difference between QR rolling out Starlink and QF rolling out Viasat. Both competing technologies that will take time.
On my JAL flight it had free wifi but not fast enough to stream video. It was only free to J, not Y.
I don’t mind QF’s decision to do it properly the first time, for all. They’ve got it on domestic where it’s really needed. For me it’s a nice to have on long haul but not essential.
QR don't offer general free wifi, it's all paid except for 1 hour to members of their FF program.
EY similarly do not offer general free wifi, although I did get a voucher code on my EY 777 flight last week. Nothing on the 787 flights.
Massive technology differences between starlink and vissat. First the vissat orbital height (36,000 km) of the satellites and also the number of satelites (4 + vissat 3 constellation still being launched). Vissat have large multipurpose communication satellites (6+ tonnes each) sitting at higher orbits thereby increasing the transmission distances/power requirements, latency and potential for data loss. Coverage on earth surface is impacted by the limited number of satellites, obviously.
So big satellites that cost a lot of money to launch that you can't easily be replaced if you let the orbit decay and fall back to earth. Replacement would take up most of the launch payload. High barrier to establishment, operational issues but more stable longer term.
Starlink: constellation of ~7000 satellites in low earth orbit (~800 km) that weight upto about 1 tonne and are more compact. Vastly shorter transmission distances, good for speed and reliability. Smaller and less weight so can piggy back onto other launches. Meaning you can launch more, if the rocket explodes you don't lose everything, and you can afford for the satellite orbit to decay so they fall back to earth.* (estimate from the interwebs that 3-4 fall back to earth each day.)
So yeah the differences in the technology mean there are massive difference between QF going vissat and QR going starlink
*Yes, the word on the street is that buying space on a launch for small payloads is relatively a affordable and is available these days. The cost of launch into LEO has decreased from ~$10000 per kg to about $5-6000 per kg over the last few years.
So, in 24 hours you went from flying with QF on a direct flight at what appears a reasonable price, to bashing them and taking an indirect (and presumably much longer) flight, because you’ll be cut off from the net for a few hours. Whilst you may tell us that your time on the flight is valuable, it seems odd that your overall time is less so. I’d almost think you were trolling.
I'm struggling to understand the OPs need to be connected to do work. That means you're "talking" (via email chat, teams message not necessarily voice/video) in real time which is pretty implausible.
I can’t really agree here. There are lots of work circumstances where you need to connect with other people or databases etc at any time of the day. Not necessarily constantly, but on demand shall we say?
When I was working in Sydney, I was working on deals with offices in New York and London and that was over 20 years ago!
Now I travel retired with my tablet, not my laptop. Only thumbnails of most files stored on the tablet and when I want to access them I download from OneDrive.
But possibly the most significant thing for me in having constant Wi-Fi means I can please myself as to what I do on-line and when. Sort of the same as dine on demand is better than fixed meal times.
( For others’ info): The QR Starlink service will be free to all passengers gate to gate (depending on permissions across countries). Being rolled out per my post above.
Absolutely. It’s probably just bad luck that Qantas committed to an inferior technology or maybe ‘doing it properly’ , so long ago and now they’re stuck with it.
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, so long ago and now they’re stuck with it.
