Emirates Airline extends Wi-fi to nearly half its fleet

Dubai airline said that 106 of its airplanes are now connected including 59 of its Airbus A380s.

An Emirates Airbus A380 is showered by water canons on airport emergency vehicles as it makes it's inaugural arrival at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. AP Photo

Emirates Airline continues to push for onboard internet connectivity for its passengers by providing the service on almost half of its fleet.

Emirates, which spends $20 million annually to install Wi-fi on its planes, said that 106 of its airplanes are now connected including 59 of its Airbus A380s, the world’s largest passenger aircraft, and 47 Boeing 777 aircraft.

The airline said that Wi-fi services are particularly popular in ultra long-haul flights, those that are over 14 hours of flying, with 30 per cent of the passengers logging in.

Emirates offers free 10 MB of data on around 60 per cent of its Wi-fi enabled fleet. This speed is sufficient to enable social media usage and texting via instant messaging apps, the airline said.

For the remaining aircraft in its enabled fleet, passengers can have access to 500 MB of data at $1.

Emirates said that the most popular websites among its passengers are Facebook and Google. In addition to chat services such as Skype and WhatsApp.

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