Virgin America’s Pick for In-Flight Wi-Fi Signals a Change for Passenger Experience
Photo Credit: Virgin America will introduce Viasat's new Exede Ku- and Ka-band high-speed Wi-Fi onboard its new A320s Virgin America
Skift Take
The faster Wi-Fi and new Red In-Flight Entertainment are great news for passengers, but we hope Virgin America will find a business model that will help it keep the service free in future.
There's little going on in the skies quite as entertaining as the battle to bring you better, faster, stronger Wi-Fi.
In a surprise disruption to the status quo, Virgin America has announced that it will introduce ViaSat’s new Exede Ku/Ka-Band Satellite powered Wi-Fi on its 10 new A320s, starting this year.
This was a head-turning announcement because Virgin America became the first U.S. airline to roll-out fleet-wide installations of Gogo's air-to-ground (ATG-4) Wi-Fi connections on all 53 of its A320s, just at the end of last year.
Entertainment Is Everything
So what caused this sudden strategic shift by Virgin America? As we've reported in various ways on a number of occasions, tomorrow's passenger experience improvements focus heavily on giving passengers the most entertainment options possible, especially on longer flights.
This is particularly important to airlines which need to differentiate to compete without giving up valuable revenue space onboard through
