We’ll have to mark this as “developing,” but it seems worth acknowledging that United Airlines seems to be having some problems with Wi-Fi on its long haul flights, and it might not get better for some time.
Complaints of United Wi-Fi not working on long haul flights
Recently there have been many complaints online about Wi-Fi not working on long haul United flights. I’ve even received emails about it from readers, who were confused about what’s going on. Not that it was ever particularly fast, but it has gotten to the point where it’s simply not available on some flights, apparently.
For example, take the below complaint, about three consecutive long haul United flights without functioning Wi-Fi.
A response to that post suggests that maybe United didn’t renew its contract with Panasonic for wide body aircraft, ahead of the transition to Starlink.
While that’s a fair theory, I was skeptical. Since it’ll be another 19 or so months before all long haul United aircraft have Starlink, it would be wild to leave planes disconnected for that long.
I wondered if anything was actually going on. After all, Wi-Fi just doesn’t work on some flights and over some areas. So did anything actually meaningfully change, or is this just a confused passenger?
What’s actually going on with United’s Pacific Wi-Fi availability?
Here’s where it gets interesting. JonNYC recently quoted a source as saying that United pilots received a memo about how the long haul satellite provider (Panasonic) was basically saturated at certain times of the day, especially over the Pacific. This was basically an acknowledgement that United’s Wi-Fi doesn’t work on some (or many) flights.
JonNYC also confirms that what’s rumored above, about United ending its contract with Panasonic, isn’t correct. What I’m not certain of is if this is somehow a United specific Panasonic issue, or one that’s impacting all Panasonic customers equally?
It could be that we’re just hearing about this at United since the carrier has a much bigger route network across the Pacific than most other Panasonic customers. But if all Panasonic customers are impacted equally, you can also expect this to be an issue on American Airlines, Singapore Airlines, etc.
Anyway, I know not everyone cares about Wi-Fi equally, but this is definitely something to keep in mind, if you do. It would suck to board a 17-hour flight from San Francisco to Singapore with a morning departure, expecting to work for much of the flight, only to find the service to be unusable.
So definitely don’t trust United’s Wi-Fi coverage map, in terms of what you can currently rely on.
Over the Pacific, expect coverage may currently look more like Delta’s coverage map, where there’s just no expectation of Wi-Fi in Asia and over much of the Pacific. 😉
Bottom line
There have been lots of reports as of late of Wi-Fi on long haul United flights being unusable (or almost unusable). This is especially the case on flights over the Pacific, which have the Panasonic system.
No, United reportedly hasn’t terminated its contract with Panasonic, or anything like that. However, it seems the airline is dealing with some major coverage gaps and limits that are highly variable, meaning some flights have almost no connectivity.
It’s not clear to me if this is impacting all Panasonic airlines equally over the Pacific, and if we’re just hearing more about this with United because the airline has such a big Pacific network. Either way, it’s worth acknowledging that something is going on, but the issue isn’t that United has terminated its Panasonic contract.
If you’ve taken a long haul United flight recently, what was your Wi-Fi experience?