Air NZ: Free Unlimited Wi-Fi on Int’l Flights
Air New Zealand 777-300 and 777-200 fleets are first in line to get Inflight Wi-Fi, with more aircraft getting enabled throughout 2019 and 2020. Companies new A321neos and A320neos are delivered with the technology already installed, and they’ll start on their 787 fleet later in 2019.
Inflight Wi-Fi together with Air New Zealand‘s award-winning seatback entertainment system will be entertaining passengers in new and exciting ways that are uniquely Air New Zealand.
Get Connected
Inflight Wi-Fi is available on a handful of our aircraft shortly after take-off. If your flight has Wi-Fi, here’s how to join our network and connect. When you’re finished, let us know how it went and be in to win 100 Airpoints Dollars™.
- Switch to Flight Mode
- Wait until shortly after take-off
- Turn on Wi-Fi and join Air NZ_InflightWiFi
- Go to wifi.airnz.com
- Follow the instructions to connect
- Enjoy for free until descent!
- Do our Wi-Fi survey and be in to win
A guide to staying connected in the sky
Generally speaking, data-light activities like browsing, emailing, messaging, and posting on Facebook are well supported. Things that are heavy on data like video and audio streaming traffic will be limited. Calls over apps are not permitted by aviation laws and regulations.
Keep in mind that:
- Heavily data-driven things like large file downloads aren’t available
- It usually takes longer to upload than to download
- Bandwidth is shared across all passengers on the plane
- We will block some content that could be offensive to your seatmates
Here’s how it works
It’s pretty exciting, actually.
When you hop on the Wi-Fi, the signal goes from your device to an antenna on top of the plane. Then, it shoots into space where it’s picked up by a satellite in orbit and sent down to Earth to collect your data. All this takes place in around two seconds
With the aircraft travelling at more than 800km/hour, by the time your data gets back to the satellite and to you, you’ve travelled the length of about five rugby fields. Impressive!
That’s no small feat, so we partnered with world-leading satellite company Inmarsat along with Panasonic Avionics for the in-cabin hardware to make it all possible.
It’s got the speed you need
Air NZ wants to make sure everyone who’s connected gets a fair share of the service. To help with this, they control the internet speed and block certain data-heavy services, like large file downloads, VOIP, and cloud services. That way everyone can get a good experience.
Want to speed things up a bit? Reduce the video resolution or send pictures on apps that reduce file size, like WhatsApp instead of iMessage, Viber or Instagram.
