Qantas to start free inflight Internet trials on Friday April 7
By David Flynn, April 5 2017
Qantas will flick the switch on its free inflight Internet service on Friday April 7 as challenger Virgin Australia readies a similar launch of its own sky-high WiFi technology later this month.
The Qantas WiFi trials will take place on a Boeing 737-800 jet (aircraft registration VH-XZB, if you must know) which will mostly dart along popular east coast routes between Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, with perhaps the odd east-west crossing (a 4+ hour journey where the ability to work online or just watch up with the latest Netflix show could come in very handy).
Passengers stepping aboard the Boeing 737 will be able to connect their laptop, tablet or smartphone to a WiFi hotspot and jump online for what Qantas promises will be a broadband experience good enough for streaming movies and live TV.
But before you ask: Qantas is unlikely to promote this first batch of 'sky-high WiFi' flights in advance due to the operational need to swap aircraft between routes (and with a fleet of some 75 Boeing 737s that leaves scope for a lot of swapping).
Recent real-world tests of the Qantas WiFi system have delivered typical download speeds between 7Mbps and 12Mbps to each connected device, providing ample overhead for streaming HD video content.
The airline previously hoped to begin public access to the Boeing 737's inflight Internet in February, and subsequently pushed back on a planned media launch in late March, due to "stability issues" with the satellite-based service.
"It’s quite a technical thing to do when you are trying to maintain a constant, high-bandwidth connection with a satellite as you’re travelling at 900 kilometres per hour" the airline said.
The airline is deliberately positioning this three-month trail as a 'beta test' for travellers to assess traffic loads and other real-world factors before locking down the Qantas WiFi spec for installation across the rest of its domestic fleet.
How Qantas WiFi will work
Qantas WiFi jets will connect to the NBN Co's pair of Sky Muster satellites which take all of Australia under their wing.
Each SkyMuster satellite blankets Australia with 101 'spot beams'
The Sky Muster birds pump out fast Ka-band signals which Qantas technology partner ViaSat says will deliver a 12Mbps pipeline to each connected device on the plane.
That's about the same clip as the fastest ADSL2+ home or office Internet services, and more than twice what's needed to watch Netflix in high definition.
“The technology we’re using makes us confident that we’ll be able to provide a fast internet connection to passengers" a Qantas spokesman told Australian Business Traveller.
"It will be enough to comfortably stream video and given we’re offering it for free, we expect take-up to be strong”.
A domestic Airbus A330 jet will be wired up – or rather, unwired up – around the middle of the year and expand the trial the Australia's transcontinental trek as part of a nine-month "proof of concept" test which will run through to September.
Qantas will then begin to roll out the same satellite technology to the rest of its domestic Airbus A330 and Boeing 737 fleet, although no decision has been made on similar upgrades for the regional Boeing 717, Fokker 100 and Bombardier Dash 8 jets of QantasLink.
Up next: international flights?
Expanding the inflight Internet service to international flights could follow, using ViaSat's global network to keep connected across the Tasman and en route to Asia, the Americas and Europe.
It's generally accepted that there is a greater appetite for inflight Internet on domestic flights – especially on Australia's transcontinental routes – than international flights, especially since around half of Qantas' international serves involve an overnight leg to Australia, which sees minimal demand because most passengers would rather sleep than surf the Web.
In late 2012 Qantas scrapped plans for Internet access on its flagship Airbus A380 fleet, citing a lacklustre response from travellers across a nine-month trial on selected superjumbo routes where the uptake was less than than 5%.
David Flynn is the Editor-in-Chief of Executive Traveller and a bit of a travel tragic with a weakness for good coffee, shopping and lychee martinis.
QFF
12 Apr 2013
Total posts 1501
Free and with ADSL speed? I love it! Curiosity though - will they block any services like SKYPE?
07 Jul 2014
Total posts 4
Skype? God, I hope not ...
05 May 2016
Total posts 631
One article said it would be limited to 20Mbps for the entire plane during the trial. If true speeds won't be great.
31 Mar 2014
Total posts 377
I read this as well. Would be good for clarification
16 Nov 2011
Total posts 596
Read elsewhere it is 12mb/s dedicated per device.
09 Feb 2012
Total posts 23
12mbit per passenger?? That would mean around 2Gbps connection to the plane was needed for a QF B738 - I thought the Ku2 band Satellite technology maxed out around 70Mbit?
09 Feb 2012
Total posts 23
Hmmm, it's KA they are using no KU - but still I think that's only 100mbit or so to the plane. So you don't get many users streaming nextflix on a busy flight to saturate that.
24 Oct 2010
Total posts 2551
From SMH: ViaSat exec says "ViaSat has provided Qantas a 12 megabits per second [Mbps] service level agreement to each connected device on the plane."
09 Feb 2012
Total posts 23
Considering SYD<>MEL is the 4th busiest air route in the world and only a 700km trip, I'm surprised they didn't do ground based in flight connectivity a while ago - surely the business case would have stacked up for business travelers wanting connectivity - I would have paid a nominal amount (Say $10-15 per flight) for that.
14 Jun 2013
Total posts 353
Telstra trialled ground-based 4G a few years ago, there's a story on AusBT about it, but while speeds were 10-15Mbps there were two reasons it wasn't rolled out.
Virgin Australia - Velocity Rewards
24 Aug 2011
Total posts 783
Ground-based connectivity is often used. More often than not the tool next to me is sending SMSs during flight.
24 Jun 2016
Total posts 7
Another call for clarification. 12 or 20 Mbps for the whole plane would be absolute rubbish - maybe two or three users might be able to stream video, any more and it's only good for loading websites or texting (and it will probably slow to a crawl once 20+ users attempt to use it simultaneously even for text-related reasons).
12 Mbps for every user on the plane is another matter, but that is certainly a bold and dangerous claim to be making, considering the B737 being wired up for this service (VH-XZB according to the SMH) has 174 seats. You'd need 2.088 Gbps to service every single seat, assuming everybody was streaming at 12 Mbps at the same time and only using a single device. An SLA would mean they'd need to guarantee this 12 Mbps to each user, which honestly just doesn't sound right. Normally there will be a certain contention ratio as we've seen with other airlines, and with NBN only giving ground customers 25 Mbps, I doubt they would spare much more than that to one plane, let alone several in the future across QF and VA.
13 Sep 2016
Total posts 178
I hope Qantas finds some way to promote the Qantas WiFi plane so people can book on it. It would have been good if the one they upgraded was the RetroRoo, that way you'd know at a glance if you were going to be on the plane with Internet access.
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
27 Feb 2015
Total posts 34
We already know it's VH-XZB. You can look here to see where the plane is so you'd know: https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/vh-xzb
13 Sep 2016
Total posts 178
Yes but that's not quite the same thing as looking out the window of the lounge for example and knowing you're on RetroRoo, most people don't bother with looking at or chasing registration numbers.
18 Nov 2015
Total posts 117
"In late 2012 Qantas scrapped plans for Internet access on its flagship Airbus A380 fleet"
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
14 Dec 2015
Total posts 9
The promise is indeed for 12MB to each pax - but that is caveated by an estimation of the average number of pax expected to be using the service, as the onboard modem simply cannot handle 12MB to every single seat.
07 Jul 2014
Total posts 4
"caveated"? When did "caveat" become a verb?
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
14 Dec 2015
Total posts 9
Never, but as the contract is already signed it then becomes appropriate to use the past tense suffix -ed. I suppose my actual error was in using 'is' instead of 'was'...
09 Sep 2012
Total posts 139
It is in fact a verb-form in Latin, and that's good enough for me.
Virgin Australia - Velocity Rewards
03 Jan 2017
Total posts 2
Interesting.
23 Sep 2015
Total posts 47
Saw -XZB parked at gate 7 at T3 in Sydney on Sunday afternoon and noticed the large hump up top... It's about 40cm high by about 1.5m long. Should have taken a photo...
22 Jun 2016
Total posts 16
I presume that connection is free for all pax, economy included, not just J pax.
18 Jan 2017
Total posts 51
I wouldnt get your hopes up.
11 Feb 2016
Total posts 15
"…most passengers would rather sleep than surf the Web."
Uh, what? Most economy passengers would love to sleep on 14-hour flights, but many cannot manage more than a few hours, so there's a significant amount of time where people would happily browse the Web.
United offers Wi-Fi on almost all of their flights; even though it's slow, I see tons of people wiling the time away, if only on WhatsApp.
QF
11 Jul 2014
Total posts 943
I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not, people skyping while I'm taking a nap?, streaming movies is a positive, checking emails is a positive, maybe Qantas can have a quite end of the plane and a noisey end.
12 Jun 2014
Total posts 71
I will be all caught up with Narcos and House of Cards :)
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
10 Jan 2017
Total posts 40
Really?! Qantas seem to think this a revolutionary invention they are introducing, when in fact Emirates, Qatar, Etihad all the true premium airlines have offered inflight WIFI for years. As always QF is behind the eight ball.
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
08 Aug 2016
Total posts 10
There is a big difference between the ViaSat and SITAonair (used by emirates) services. The proposition and bandwidth are very different.
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
11 Oct 2014
Total posts 685
Let's not forget across the Pacific - UA, AA and DL already offer this as well. And yes, this 'revolutionary' QF option on international will - in all probability - take another 2 years to be fitted to the A380's to LAX and/or DFW.
16 Dec 2016
Total posts 50
What a stupid comment. Qantas is one of the most innovative airlines in the world
23 Feb 2015
Total posts 263
The first time I sit next to someone having a Skype call is also going to be the first time I seriously consider VA!
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
08 Aug 2016
Total posts 10
The tech used by ViaSat allows each connection to share the available bandwidth, so if there is enough capacity every device can have 12mbps. If there isn't, various options are available to shape users - tiered plans, first class priority, application shaping/blocking etc. the main issue to handle is the latency - Skype calls could be poor not because of the bandwidth but the delays in the conversation. Netflix works well apparently.
QF
11 Jul 2014
Total posts 943
I wonder if a VPN will work?
04 Nov 2012
Total posts 213
Does this mean I'll now be able to hear passengers streaming loud video games and talking on Skype gee I'll look forward to that.
22 Feb 2017
Total posts 4
given there's nothing stopping customers from playing loud noises from their devices without wifi, i can't see how wifi will change this.
QF
11 Jul 2014
Total posts 943
Qantas is working with the NBN Co, I have never seen anyone work successfully with the NBN Co.
18 Apr 2015
Total posts 67
Erm, what were they doing all last year during the testing phase?
21 Mar 2017
Total posts 5
Interesting that the staff test flight in Feb was judged a smashing success, 7-12MBps per device, but some hiccup has developed to make QF push back the launch and especially the media flight with only a few days notice. Fault-finding can be a b*tch!
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
02 Jun 2015
Total posts 34
The wifi internet was on my flight today between SYD and BNE but it wasn't working!!
28 Oct 2011
Total posts 654
that's interesting. since wifi still isn't available to the general public.
13 Sep 2016
Total posts 12
Can't blame QF for this, as much as some people here seem to like to do. Tech issues abound in today's world, QF techs need time to get this sorted or the 'launch' will be a laughable failure and QF will get panned big-time by media. Kudos for doing it right, QF.
Emirates Airlines - Skywards
11 Mar 2015
Total posts 193
cyber world-5 years ago you hardly had a decent mobile phone and now everyone wants a wi-fi coming out their own backsides-get a life!-the future will be that all gadgets will be banned from flights anyway so why bother??
14 Dec 2015
Total posts 17
Gee, and any idea when Armageddon coming. :)
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
02 Jun 2015
Total posts 34
Undertheradar - the flight crew announced it on departure that they were the trial aircraft and to try it out. No-one could even find the wifi network.
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
18 Oct 2012
Total posts 129
Even Vietnam Airlines 787 product is looking better...
04 Sep 2015
Total posts 2
I had heard from an NBN contact that Qantas will only have access to the residual bandwidth - meaning the on ground satellite services will run at a priority to the planes.
31 Mar 2014
Total posts 377
This wouldn't surprise me at all. The purpose of the satellites is to service NBN customers. If Qantas started getting priority bandwidth over NBN customers, it would be a shit storm. blah blah my tax dollars this and my tax dollars that.
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
29 Nov 2013
Total posts 475
Qantas is a customer of the NBN, so stating that they are using satellites at the expense of NBN is not technically correct.
25 Jul 2011
Total posts 17
The Sky Muster satellites have 74gb of bandwidth, and there are two of them. I know that the Qantas staff trial gave them 7-12mb/s, but I am guessing they weren't all running at that throughput all the time.
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
29 Apr 2013
Total posts 13
Crikey...the last place I can hide for 4 hours from the boss and the Mrs has now gone....
16 Dec 2016
Total posts 50
Wow! Qantas seriously can't win. They are testing in order to provide an excellent and fast product AT NO CHARGE! All you are doing is shooting down something before you have even tried it. The technology has only just arrived to allow this degree of inflight connectivity in Australia and QF are pushing hard to get it to market. They should be applauded and encouraged to take new things to market so that we can judge as customers. The armchair experts who shoot down our national airline should fly domestically in Europe or the US to be reminded just how good Qantas are, on every level. Save your judgement for when you've actually used it. Good on you Qantas and good luck with the beta testing.
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