Getting work done on a plane is all too often a case of best-laid plans. Even in the ideal scenario where the Wi-Fi works, numerous factors from your fellow passengers to tweaks to the routing can quickly leave you out of luck.
Traveloka, the leading travel booking app in Southeast Asia, has just completed a comprehensive survey of tech-friendly airlines, ranking 50 international carriers based on Wi-Fi availability, speed, cost and other connectivity features such as inset outlets and USB ports. According to its findings, the top three airlines to prioritize for in-flight efficiency are Qatar, Emirates and Delta, in descending order.
Take that with a grain of salt, though.
For starters, the company's methodology focused only on the top 50 carriers in the world as ranked by SkyTrax, whose annual list — while authoritative — omits tech-friendly airlines such as United on the basis of other factors, such as punctuality and staff friendliness.
And while some carriers on the list, like JetBlue Airways (No. 5), offer Wi-Fi consistently across a majority of their fleets, others like Eva Air (No. 10) only have Wi-Fi on half its planes. According to a Traveloka spokesperson, working around such limitations provides an accurate picture of the "best-case scenario" on any of these companies.
Expand the data for each of Traveloka's winners, and you will see even more complexities come to light. For one thing, you may notice that British Airways (No. 4) offers the fastest service in the Top 10, at 20 Mbps. Emirates (No. 2), Etihad (No. 9) and Eva, by comparison, are all under 2 Mbps. Not great when you are paying upward of $14 per hour and hoping to put out an office fire.
For just that reason, Routehappy by ATPCO, an aviation data insights company that tracks in-flight amenities for every individual aircraft and cabin, has recently overhauled the way that it presents its reporting on this topic.
"Airlines don't see a choice anymore. Offering Wi-Fi is a competitive need. The question is more about what you can expect out of your Wi-Fi rather than if you'll have it at all," said Jason Rabinowitz, the company's director of airline research.