Inflight Wi-Fi is FREE for the long haul

Your Inflight Wi-Fi is on us, to help you stay connected.

Enjoy Inflight Wi-Fi for free on all our enabled aircraft when you fly with us internationally. We're making it easier than ever to stay connected, and showing a little more of our Kiwi hospitality.

Plane by plane, we're extending the technology to more of our fleet, too.

The majority of our 777-300 and 777-200 fleet are now wi-fi enabled, with the remaining aircraft to be fitted out in 2020. Our new A321neos and A320neos are delivered with the technology already installed, and we'll start on our 787 fleet later in 2020.

It's big news for us and our customers. Inflight Wi-Fi together with our award-winning seatback entertainment system will be entertaining you in new and exciting ways that are uniquely Air New Zealand.

Get connected

Inflight Wi-Fi is available shortly after take-off. If your flight has Wi-Fi, here's how to join our network and connect. 

  1. Switch to Flight Mode
  2. Wait until shortly after take-off
  3. Turn on Wi-Fi and join AirNZ_InflightWiFi
  4. Go to wifi.airnz.com
  5. Follow the instructions to connect
  6. Enjoy for free until descent!

Find out if your flight has Inflight Wi-Fi

Air NZ app Inflight Wi-Fi.

The best way to know if your flight will have Inflight Wi-Fi is to download our Air NZ mobile app. If you're travelling on one of our Wi-Fi enabled planes, you'll see a Wi-Fi icon in your flight details 5 days before you fly. We recommend checking on the day of your flight for the most up-to-date info, as the exact aircraft scheduled can change.

A guide to staying connected in the sky

Generally speaking, data-light activities like browsing, emailing, messaging, and posting on Facebook are well supported. Things that are heavy on data like video and audio streaming are okay but may be limited. Calls over apps are not permitted by aviation laws and regulations.

Keep in mind that:

  • Heavily data-driven things like large file downloads aren't available
  • It usually takes longer to upload than download
  • Bandwidth is shared across all passengers on the plane
  • We will block some content that could be offensive to your seatmates

Can do

  • Internet browsing
  • Email
  • Social media
  • Messaging over apps (WhatsApp works best for texts and images)
  • Common VPNs
  • Music streaming (like Spotify)
  • Video streaming (like YouTube at low resolution)

Can't do

  • Video calls
  • Voice calls over apps
  • App downloads and updates
  • High resolution video may be limited
  • Cloud services
  • Objectionable content (like violence and pornography)
  • Real-time multi-player gaming

Here's how it works

It's pretty exciting, actually.

Air New Zealand inflight Wi-Fi how it works.

When you hop on the Wi-Fi, the signal goes from your device to an antenna on top of the plane. Then, it shoots into space where it's picked up by a satellite in orbit and sent down to earth to collect your data. All this takes place in around two seconds

With the aircraft travelling at more than 800km/hour, by the time your data gets back to the satellite and to you, you've travelled the length of about five rugby fields. Impressive!

That's no small feat, so we partnered with world-leading satellite company Inmarsat along with Panasonic Avionics for the in-cabin hardware to make it all possible.

It's got the speed you need

Female flight attendant with Apple watch in galley.

We want to make sure everyone who's connected gets a fair share of the service. To help with this, we control the internet speed and block certain data-heavy services, like large file downloads and cloud services. That way everyone can get a good experience. 

Want to speed things up a bit? Reduce the video resolution or send pictures on apps that reduce file size, like WhatsApp instead of iMessage, Viber or Instagram.