What is ASM?

The industry standard for measuring the total service capacity of an airline is Available Seat Miles (ASM). To calculate an airline’s ASM, multiply the total number of seats in its fleet of planes by the total number of miles the airline flies in a year. Our availability statistic is the percentage of an airline’s ASM on which it offers Wi-Fi.

JetBlue offers the best overall in-flight Wi-Fi for personal travel.

The biggest reason JetBlue tops our rankings is because not only is it widely available, it comes at no extra cost. JetBlue is the only airline in America that offers free in-flight Wi-Fi.

Along with being the most affordable, JetBlue’s in-flight Wi-Fi was among the fastest (tied with Delta and Virgin America at 15 Mbps) in our original iteration of this data. However, while updating this piece, we found JetBlue is now advertising speeds of just 12 Mbps. It’s a small decrease, but we were curious about why it happened. Digging a little deeper, we found that it may stem from JetBlue’s Internet Service Provider, ViaSat.

ViaSat launched a new satellite in June 2017. Positioning the satellite took a few months, and then the satellite entered an interim phase where the company began testing its functionality. During this phase, ViaSat has been conservative with the speeds it promises, but we expect speeds to pick up soon, as ViaSat continues to dial in its new satellite. This may be a possible explanation for JetBlue’s recent drop in speed, although it’s still unclear whether this directly relates to ViaSat’s in-flight Wi-Fi services or not.

Southwest grabbed the second spot with a great balance of affordability and availability. It offers in-flight Wi-Fi on 90% of its ASM and charges just $8 per day.