American Airlines Makes You Watch Two Ads For “Free” Wi-Fi Every Flight—Even After You’ve Bought What They’re Selling

Free wi-fi on a plane is not free. You pay, with your time and attention instead of your money. Delta makes you watch an ad. United has a whole effort at a ‘media network’ to monetize your attention. Southwest presents a promotion from T-Mobile, and American Airlines makes you watch two ads, one each from AT&T and for their Citibank credit card. To get unpriced internet access you generally must: join the airline’s frequent flyer program wait until the ads load and run They want you in their frequent flyer program to get you into their funnel and pitch their credit card, although I suspect this isn’t as effective as many loyalty and card executives hope. I hate the friction. I really like just being connected to the internet, and getting to work not wasting my time. I’ve actually even pondered whether paying for wifi was better than the time it takes to watch the ads across each flight (I had a paid monthly plan with American). Here’s the thing – they have plenty of cardholders on American’s flights already! I guess there could be some value in advertising to existing cardholders, maybe it could help keep the card top of mind and wallet and increase retention and use alike. I tend to think that would be a different ad optimized for that purpose though. The same goes for AT&T. So I propose a deal: anyone who already has AT&T service, and an American Airlines credit card, who charges their AT&T bill to the American card, should get to skip the ads. How many times do I – as an existing AT&T customer – need to watch an ad for AT&T? And I have several American Airlines credit cards! So yes, this deal that I propose is self-interested. But I even suggest having to charge the AT&T bill to the card, even though there’s no cell phone insurance and earning is higher elsewhere. This would do something better than make frequent flyers watch the same ad over and over as a condition of connectivity which gets annoying and maybe even reduces affinity for the brands! It rewards taking exactly the actions that the ads promote with these exact brand partners. It gets the AAdvantage card additional use and spend and a reason not to cancel, because customers would have to move their recurring billings if they did. Surely that’s a worthwhile trade? Am I the only one annoyed by the frictions that free onboard wifi has introduced? Topics on this page