Aircraft login WiFi survey report

A few days ago, Air China entered WIFI on its passenger aircraft and began to use WiFi to access the Beijing-Shanghai flight. Air China said that by the end of the year, it will complete the installation of WiFi for the Airbus A330 fleet.

However, in a survey conducted by the survey, nearly 70% of the interviewed passengers did not want to pay extra for in-flight WiFi.

The civil aviation professional website “Civil Aviation Resources Network” recently launched a survey on WiFi flights, attracting more than 500 passengers and 400 civil aviation practitioners to vote. The results show that 69% of domestic passengers and 61% of civil aviation practitioners in China are reluctant to pay for wireless services onboard. Regardless of which billing methods are willing to pay, only 6% of travelers are willing to pay, and the industry only accounts for 3%.

The sharp contrast between the attention of WiFi airwaves and the reluctance to pay for passengers may be related to the domestic passenger's flight habits. Some airline survey results show that on domestic flights, mobile phones cannot be used, while passengers carrying computers on aircraft only account for about 15%. Among them, those who are willing to turn on their computers to use WiFi signals account for only 5%-8%. The airline said, "For more travelers, within one or two hours of sailing, e-mail, microblogging and other network activities are dispensable."

At present, only Air China has opened a free-to-air WiFi connection. Hainan Airlines Company Limited (Hainan Airlines Company Limited, referred to as "HNA") and other companies' on-board wireless services are limited to the local area network within the cabin and cannot be used to send and receive mail and other network connection operations. Air China emphasized that there are no charging plans for modified WiFi flights.

For airlines, it is not difficult to transform the aircraft into a WiFi flight. However, the capital cost of the reconstruction can not be ignored. The cost of installing wireless network equipment for each aircraft is about 2 million yuan, and the cost varies according to the size of the aircraft.

Some civil aviation industry insiders predict that if a WiFi flight cannot open the market quickly in a short period of time, the airline may not charge extra fees, but it will reduce the ticket discount.

Although the issue of fees is not clear for a while, domestic airlines have mostly expressed their optimism for the long-term market and have actively participated in it. Air China said that by the end of the year, it will complete the installation of WiFi for the Airbus A330 fleet. Hainan Airlines, Shenzhen Airlines and other companies have also tried cabin LANs in succession to make final preparations for ground-to-ground interconnection.

At present, the route of a flight with a wireless network device installed is present in a “random” state, and is not used as a ticket maker. Passengers cannot check whether the flight is organic on the Internet when booking a ticket. Air China customer service personnel said that because the current WiFi network is installed on only a few aircraft, and the flight with WiFi is not fixed, which flight route will be known only within a few hours before takeoff, therefore, currently WiFi flights cannot be booked yet.