Sure, we may be accustomed to U.S. airlines like United, Delta, and JetBlue claiming to offer network connectivity thousands of feet in the air, but unless your idea of Wi-Fi is somehow stuck in the mid 1990’s, you’re probably none too pleased with the quality of your connection. That’s why Korean Air has firmly refused to even pretend to offer in-flight Wi-Fi.
In an interview with APEX Magazine, Dionee was asked, “How do content and entertainment expectations change for people when they are traveling?” His answer was simple (and we would say, correct): “I believe that passengers have similar expectations for in-flight and on-ground content and connectivity options,” the executive noted. As such, getting anything less than their expectations would be “disappointing.”
This would likely be especially true in a country like South Korea, which has long boasted some of the fastest internet speeds in the world. Dionne said that ” … in Korea, the wireless infrastructure is so advanced (significantly faster than the U.S. average) that in-flight Internet services based on existing commercial satellite technology would be disappointing to them. That is a primary reason why Korean Air has not implemented in-flight Internet.”
It’s really not an altogether ludicrous statement (though it does seem a bit extreme). For example, whereas the average peak internet speed in South Korea stands at 95.3 Mbps (seriously), GoGo’s ATG-4 in-flight Wi-Fi service hits just 9.8 Mbps. And once you go fast, you really can’t go back.
So apparently, Korean Air’s approach is simply, “Why bother?”
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