Megabyte packages suck for consumers. Figuring out what to buy and how much bandwidth will be consumed generally leaves travelers over-spending or disappointed when an app decides to eat the full allocation in the background. Some airlines still favor them, however, as they bring certainty to the costs of provisioning the inflight connectivity services on board. As Air Europa resumes service this week it is pivoting away from the megabyte packages towards better priced, customer-friendly full flight packages for its onboard wifi service.
The new packages are split into three categories, Chat, Chat and Surf, and Chat and Surf Plus. These are similar to the Basic, Popular and Premium services previously sold, but without the data caps.
Much like the megabyte packages, the new full flight rates vary between long-haul and short-haul markets. The new plans range from 3-12 euro on European routes and 5-30 euro for intercontinental service. While the full flight Chat and Surf Plus is more expensive on the intercontinental routes it also includes unlimited data, not a 100 megabyte limit. And the other plans appear to all be less expensive.
The previous round of prices, while unfortunate for passengers, is an improvement on the original pricing when the service launched in 2016. At that time the rates delivered only half the Megabytes they did before the switch to full flight pricing.
Air Europa offers wifi service across its entire 787 and A330 long-haul fleet as well as its newest 737-800s. The underlying service is powered by Panasonic Avionics‘ XConnect running on the Global Communications Suite Ku-band satellite network.
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