Qantas starts international wifi

[justinbrett]

At this point, I'm hoping for QF to abandon Viasat and move towards Starlink. Friends recently travelled on HA from SYD-HNL.

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It is piss poor that we are "waiting" for Viasat. Especially in 2024. My friends have moved to SQ or DL for free WiFi now.

Apparently the max bandwidth per aircraft is 350Mbps on Starlink so your friend mustn’t have had much competition. I’m travelling on HA this week so I’ll give it a try myself.

 

[BrianQQ]

Apparently the max bandwidth per aircraft is 350Mbps on Starlink so your friend mustn’t have had much competition. I’m travelling on HA this week so I’ll give it a try myself.

He stated full flight with two people Facetiming, lowest speed he got was 78 down 13 up.

Safe travels and have fun on the Moana 2 branded planes!

 

[justinbrett]

He stated full flight with two people Facetiming

You've lost me right there! Sounds awful.

 

[justinbrett]

He stated full flight with two people Facetiming, lowest speed he got was 78 down 13 up.

Safe travels and have fun on the Moana 2 branded planes!

Average I got was about 150mbps, but it was an overnight flight with seat back IFE so doubt there was heavy demand on the system. It was much slower within the last hour prior to landing as I assume a lot of people were using it.

However I note there is clear rules no voice/video calls, as you log in but also announced by the FAs.

 

[Cognac]

Any inside knowledge on when the 787s are going to be kitted out? I know that they are due to start their install during maintenance as of this month, but I assume that this is subject to change. And I also expect they won't be turning on any of the aircraft until all of the aircraft are kitted out (similar to the A330 approach). Also, why not just turn it on as it is available? Not only does this give the customers on those flights a better experience sooner, it allows them to identify bugs/issues in a staggered release and have them fixed (well, for a given value of Qantas IT fixed) as they go, rather than just releasing everything at once and finding out it doesn't work when they try to turn it on?

 

[MelbFlyer]

I was on QF38 SIN to MEL the other day operated by an A330-200 and I was able to access Wi-Fi when the plane was flying over Australia.

Speeds weren't great but usable.

They've removed the IFE screen and instead placed iPads in the seat pockets - it was my first flight on QFi in economy for a number of years so I hadn't seen it first hand.

Would probably still prefer the IFE screen in-built but I guess things change.

 

[wenglock.mok]

I was on QF38 SIN to MEL the other day operated by an A330-200 and I was able to access Wi-Fi when the plane was flying over Australia.

Speeds weren't great but usable.

They've removed the IFE screen and instead placed iPads in the seat pockets - it was my first flight on QFi in economy for a number of years so I hadn't seen it first hand.

Would probably still prefer the IFE screen in-built but I guess things change.

You actually flew on one of the domestic A330-200s operated on an international sector, which explains the lack of an in-seat IFE and the availability of wifi over Australia. With the drop in domestic demand, they are now operating these on the shorter international sectors (SIN, CGK, DPS and MNL).

The international A330-200s do have in-seat IFEs and will be getting wifi sometime in 2025. These are also the birds that will be getting new seats and seatback screens in economy sometime this year.