Icelandair has been talking up its connectivity prowess recently, claiming 95% of its aircraft fleet now has on-board wifi.
The idea of having on-board wifi for passengers, especially on the busy transatlantic routes, is almost guaranteed to become a significant element in the marketing campaigns of most carriers in the years to come.
Iceland's flag carrier is pushing the strategy hard already, claiming it is leaps ahead of Delta, Virgin Atlantic, American Airlines and British Airways, which have low wifi capability of 16%, 10%, 9% and 0.3% respectively on their fleet percentages.
Despite having a poke at its rival carriers, Icelandair admits the process of getting towards a unified system for all passengers is a lot more complex than simply fitting a bunch of wifi routers on its Boeing 757s.
First of all, Icelandair outlines the reasons for considering installing the kit in the first place.
Almost every passenger (97%) has personal electronic device of some kind.
- 81% carry a phone
- 43% bring a tablet
- 43% fly with a laptop
- 18% bring all three
Consumer desire to stay connected generally is very high, so why not give passengers that access on-board a flight.
In fact, 60% of Americans claim they cannot go without wifi for more than one day, whilst 43% and 39% respectively would happily give up chocolate or coffee for access.
When it comes to the commercial aviation industry, some two million passengers a month are now connecting to wifi during a flight, with the figure only expected to get higher as an estimated 14,000 aircraft are expected to be fitted with equipment by 2025.
Choice is - again, especially in the long haul market - at the centre of it all, with 22% of passengers supposedly having picked a more expensive flight because it had wifi as an option.
Almost one in five (17%) have switched from their favourite airline to another because of wifi capability, whilst a remarkable 29% claim they would give up their confirmed ticket for a standby fare on a flight with faster wifi.
Unsurprisingly, 85% of passengers would use wifi on a flight if it was free.
But the challenges are huge when it comes to both the financial outlay and technical outlay required to kit out a fleet with on-board wifi.
The technology itself is substandard to that which passengers would normally find on the ground, with fibre-optic cables currently hauling 40-100 Mbps compared to the 15-20 Mbps achieved from the satellite broadband that aircraft are forced to use.
And, inevitably, any overwhelming enthusiasm by passengers to use their devices on a wifi network on-board will have an adverse effect - the more people are using the system, the slower the speed.
Still, the desire by passengers to stay connected is huge, whether it is wanting to simply browse or stream videos and music (48%, according to Gogo), keep in touch with work (40%) or simply communicate on messaging services or social media (12%).
One of the significant ideas now being given serious consideration by airlines is the plan to do away with in-flight entertainment systems entirely - primarily because their usage could be replaced with higher end wifi capability that passengers can then just tap into using their own devices.
The benefits appear to be pretty good, as ordinarily it costs an average of $3 million to outfit a plane with an IFE screen for every seat.
Weight and fuel use are also major considerations as IFEs typically weigh around 13 pounds, meaning a Boeing 767 could save 80 metric tons of fuel every year.
And the very fact that many passengers will improve the spec of their devices (hello, new iPad) more often than an airline will upgrade their IFEs means that screen quality on a seat-back unit is generally never going to match those on personal systems.
This, of course, might not satisfy the (dwindling) numbers who do not bring their own devices, so airlines will have to weigh up (no pun intended) the benefits of stowing spares for passengers (thus piling on a few pounds on the aircraft's fuel drag).