02-07-2018
04:38 PM
02-07-2018
04:38 PM
Best I can tell wi-fi is a topic with tens of thousands of views on this forum. Would not be surprised if it is the most searched term. Because it sucks on Southwest. And it has sucked for years. Yet SW appears tone deaf of these countless complaints. I have heard it is the single biggest item SW issues credits for. I qualified for A List preferred and qualified for free wi-fi last year. I was not excited about it till I read Southwest had signed on with another provider Panasonic Aviation with a much faster Ku-band network. The previous provider Row 44, acquired by Golden Eagle had poor performance for years. Best I can tell even today only a small portion of the fleet connects with Panasoinc so they continue with the miserable speeds of prior years while making it look they have improved. I have asked them to share with me under NDA (I am a technology adviser) metrics and not just words it is improving. They have refused. I have asked them to share with the broader customer base speed and other metrics - not difficult to do on a periodic basis. They have refused. Us passengers see all kinds of on-time, customer service and other metrics. It is not some high-security secret to share data that shows if the performance is actually improving. Especially for an airline which brags about transparency - I know they spell it differently 🙂 Anyone can run Speedtest on any flight and get the upload and download speeds but it would be nice for SW to step up. As they say step 1 to solve any problem is to acknowledge you have one. For 5 years, SW has not been willing to acknowledge that productivity in the air is an important matter for business travelers. And that they should push their wi-fi providers to improve it. Can you imagine if their fuel supplier supplied sub standard fuel or their catering service provided contaminated food? They would fire them in a heartbeat. For whatever reason they seem content to not push their wi-fi service providers.
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