5 ways to get free inflight Wi-Fi in North America and Europe, 2021.

New simple alternative to enjoy free inflight WiFi — Flightful app.

Everyone wants free Wi-Fi when flying. But so far, there have been only these four ways to get onboard internet for free:

1. JetBlue and Norwegian give all their fliers unlimited free inflight internet. There are few “gotchas” though — no performance guarantee (works 9 out 10 flights?), and at least Norwegian does not allow access to social media with their free tier (duh?).
2. AeroMexico, Alaska, American Airlines, Delta, Southwest, Air France and TAP Portugal give all their fliers free inflight messaging access, limited to iMessage, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp usage.
3. Swiss, Lufthansa, SAS, Finnair, Aer Lingus, Icelandair, Air Canada provide business class and gold tier passengers with limited free inflight Wi-Fi access. Industry standard seems to be 1h of Wi-Fi at the lowest speed tier. Swiss, however, goes as far as to limit free access to 50MB only (no-kidding!).
4. Magenta subscribers of T-Mobile/Telekom and Visa Infinite customers can enjoy at least 1h of free inflight Wi-Fi at the lowest speed onboard Alaska, Delta, Lufthansa and Austrian. Even the free inflight Wi-Fi access needs to be activated every single time in an onboard login portal. It’s a frustrating process which requires some tech savviness as well as effort — especially when one discovers that a credit card still must be fetched from the overhead bin to get things done after the first hour or 50MB.
5. Luckily, the Flightful app now provides a simple, fifth alternative to enjoy free inflight Wi-Fi across the largest number of North American and European planes.

Flightful enables one-click, free unlimited Signal Private Messenger, iMessage, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp messaging access across a large number of GoGo and FlyNet internet connected airplanes of Aer Lingus, AeroMexico, Air Canada, Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Austrian Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Lufthansa, United Airlines, United Express and Virgin Atlantic.

For only $5 per month, the Flightful Premium subscription adds email access (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, Apple Mail) and support for all other widely used messaging apps (Slack, Telegram, Skype, Viber, WeChat, Line, KakaoTalk, QQ, Discord and GroupMe). Unlimited internet access can be unlocked in Flightful for 5 minutes with just a $1.99 in-app purchase to sync social media feeds or to simply browse the web.

Photo: Anete Lusina, Unsplash