With companies making in-flight Wi-Fi a standard feature on most flights, Ookla has ranked airlines like Air Canada and WestJet in speed and latency performance.
Image Credit Ookla
According to Ooklas rankings, Air Canada ranks fourth in terms of download speed, sitting behind Hawaiian Airlines, Qatar Airways, and Spirit Airlines. Westjet sits a point ahead of Virgin Atlantic at 38.89 mbps, but behind Aeromexico. Despite a decently high median download speed, Air Canada falls flat in terms of P90 download speed with 78.61 mbps, while the surrounding competition all hit well over 100.
Image Credit- Ookla
In terms of upload speed, Qatar Airways and Hawaiian Airlines rapidly outpace Air Canada, who sits in third. Qatar Airways has a median upload speed of 21.26 mbps and 20.47 mbps, which is double what Air Canada provides. WestJet sits a spot behind Air Canada, but has half the median upload speed. However, it does slide a bit in terms of latency, falling to 14th out of the group with a 768. Westjet sits in 10th with a 721. The same two companies sit at the top by a large margin; however, Qatar Airways has an exceptionally high P10 latency of 848.
Image Credit- Ookla
As Ookla points out, the speeds from Hawaiian Airlines and Qatar Airways can be attributed to both airlines adopting Starlinks low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation to deliver their in-flight connection, which provides download/upload speeds and latency that the report describes as better than the other airlines.
To add some context, we reviewed Air Canadas new free in-flight WiFi, which was introduced to Aeroplan members in May.
According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), their newly-incorporated Quality of in-flight WiFi benchmark placed 21st out of 21, falling behind baggage handling, seat comfort, and even airline food.
