Virgin Australia has announced that it now offers Wi-Fi to passengers travelling on flights to and from Los Angeles, making it the only Australian airline to do so thus far.
Starting today, Virgin Australia customers will be able to access Wi-Fi on all five Virgin Australia Boeing 777s and ten of the company’s Boeing 737s, with 75 per cent of the latter fleet to be completed by the end of 2018. Its A330-200 aircraft are expected to be fitted in early 2019.
Of course, this connectivity comes at a cost, whether it’s $8.99 for a single hour, or $19.99 for the entire flight. Not bad when you think about it.
“Most of us use our phones on a daily – if not hourly basis – meaning it can be incredibly disruptive to have extended periods of time when you can’t connect with friends, family, colleagues, or what’s going on in the world,” Virgin Australia Airlines group executive Rob Sharp said in a press release. “We’re proud to be the leader in providing Australians with greater inflight connectivity on international flights.”
According to research commissioned by the airline, 70 per cent of Aussies say they’ve experienced ‘net-lag’ or frustration from not being able to access the internet during a flight. Furthermore, 65 per cent admitted feeling overwhelmed by the clusterfuck of emails and messages they had to catch up on after landing in their destination.
So there you go, folks. If you’re partial to a bit of ‘net-lag’ yourself, it looks like Virgin is your airline of choice until the others catch up.
