Air Canada, WestJet ranked on in-flight WiFi performance

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 Ookla’s 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 Starlink’s 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 Canada’s 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.