Emirates is now offering Wi-Fi services for all flights, providing passengers with the opportunity to stay connected during their journey.

On May 19th, Emirates announced that it would offer basic complimentary inflight WiFi to all passengers, regardless of cabin and travel class. The airline provided something similar pre-pandemic, but time limits seem to have disappeared this time. While this change will positively impact tens of thousands of passengers per week, it will still come at a different type of cost.

$300 million invested into onboard connectivity

From fitting aircraft with the right equipment to paying for the actual service, inflight WiFi is costly. But it appears that Emirates is willing to go the distance, investing more than $300 million to date for onboard connectivity across its fleet of Boeing 777s and Airbus A380s.

While this inflight internet won't require any payment, there's still one catch: It's only free for Emirates Skywards members. Emirates Skywards is the carrier's loyalty program, which is free to join.

Additionally, the airline states that first class passengers will have unlimited free (full) internet if they are Skywards members, "enabling them to shop or work online while inflight." Silver, Gold, and Platinum Skywards members traveling in business class also have this full access, as will Platinum Skywards members, regardless of travel class.

This is a massive change from May 2020, when we reported that the airline had cut free basic onboard WiFi for passengers. Before the cut, all passengers had access to 20 MB of free data or two hours of free messaging.

The requirement to join Skywards

As has been the policy of some other airlines worldwide, Emirates' free basic inflight messaging is only available to members of the carrier's loyalty program - something it sees as an "easy and complimentary process." Emirates notes that those interested can sign up via emirates.com, flydubai.com, the official Emirates app, or the flydubai app and directly from the WiFi portal onboard.

US carrier Delta Air Lines is another notable carrier offering free inflight WiFi to all its loyalty members. As we reported last year, Delta became the first of the big four US airlines to provide free WiFi onboard for its Delta SkyMiles members.

Only basic messaging is free

Despite being complimentary and 'unlimited' in terms of time, this free inflight WiFi will only cover app messaging. This covers messaging apps such as:

WhatsApp

iMessage

Facebook Messenger

WeChat

Line

Viber

This is also unlikely to include the ability to send photos or video within these apps, nor will voice and video calls be possible under this 'plan.'

Ultimately, travelers who are not Skywards members can pay $2.99-5.99 (depending on the flight length) to access this service. So at the end of the day, this is how much one would save (per flight) as a member of Skywards. If you are an economy class passenger without Platinum status, you can get full internet connectivity for $9.99-19.99, depending on the flight length. Or, if you need 30 minutes of unlimited data, this is available for $9.99.