Qantas provided (04-Jul-2017) an update of its three month customer trial for onboard WiFi. Qantas stated the WiFi has been performing well and the trial will be expanded to an additional aircraft, another Boeing 737 with up to eight more to be fitted with WiFi by late Sep-2017. Key findings of the trial include:
- Up to 3500 passengers a week had the WiFi available to them;
- An average of 32% of passengers chose to log on at some stage in the flight. The industry standard is less than 10%, but the carrier is expecting between 30%-50% when the services is fully rolled out;
- Passengers spent most of the time using email and browsing the web, in particular news sites. This is followed by social media, streaming video and music services, messaging services and then online shopping;
- Reliability of the service has improved to above 98%;
- Download speeds now are routinely above 12 megabits per second;
- Overall customer satisfaction is positive, with the latest survey figures showing 88% of customers were happy with their WiFi experience. [more - original PR]