Viasat Inflight Wi-Fi Getting Big Upgrade: Airline Passengers Rejoice

Inflight connectivity has come a long way over the years. Going back just a few years, Viasat was considered the gold standard of inflight connectivity, while nowadays Starlink is stealing the show.The issue with Viasat is twofold — not only have expectations of internet speeds evolved, but on top of that, there’s only so much total bandwidth, and as more and more airlines add the service (and as other airlines make it free for passengers, increasing usage), it slows things down for everyone.So there’s a pretty exciting development, as in the coming weeks we should see the biggest boost to Viasat Wi-Fi that we’ve seen in years, and passengers on American, Delta, and JetBlue, among others, will definitely notice. Viasat’s new F2 satellite entering service soonThis is great news for American, Delta, and JetBlueBottom line Viasat’s new F2 satellite entering service soonFor quite some time, Viasat has been working toward having its new Viasat-3 Ka-band geostationary satellites go “live.” Viasat-3 Flight 2 launched in November 2025, while Flight 3 launched in April 2026, and they’re expected to finally enter service very soon.As you’d expect, there’s quite a bit that has to happen before these can go live, including getting regulatory approval. Viasat-3 Flight 2 covers the Americas, while Flight 3 covers Asia-Pacific, and the Americas version should enter service in August 2026. We can expect network capacity to more than double with these upgrades, adding over one terabit per second of capacity.So while the maximum speeds won’t necessarily improve, you can expect that during busy periods, users will be able to more reliably get decent speeds.JetBlue has Viasat Wi-Fi on all of its planesThis is great news for American, Delta, and JetBlueAmerican, Delta, and JetBlue, are the three US carriers that have the largest number of aircraft with Viasat Wi-Fi. All three airlines offer free Wi-Fi on Viasat aircraft, so to cover the basics:American has Viasat Wi-Fi on a vast majority of its narrow body aircraft; the airline plans to introduce Starlink as of 2027, but “only” on 500 aircraftDelta has Viasat Wi-Fi on most of its aircraft (including some narrow body and wide body planes); the airline plans to introduce Amazon Leo as of 2028, if/when that is certifiedJetBlue has Viasat Wi-Fi on all of its aircraft; the airline plans to introduce Amazon Leo as of 2028, if/when that is certifiedUnited has Viasat Wi-Fi on select narrow body aircraft; however, the airline is quickly replacing that with Starlink Wi-Fi, so the value to United in this is limited in the long runSo yeah, this is great news for American, Delta, and United. Will Viasat’s upgraded Wi-Fi be as good as Starlink? Absolutely not. But it should help in those situations where the connectivity is just excruciatingly slow, which is becoming increasingly common, unfortunately.American has Viasat Wi-Fi on all of its narrow body planesBottom lineViasat will finally be getting a significant bump in network capacity, which will be especially noticeable in the United States, given the number of aircraft using Viasat. Viasat used to be super fast, but as use of the service has increased, speeds have worsened considerably. That should finally be reversed again in the coming weeks, with the entry into service of the Viasat-3 Flight 2 satellite.What do you make of this Viasat development?