Vistara, in 2020, became the only Indian carrier to offer wifi connectivity on their aircraft, with their Boeing 787-9 and Airbus A321neo aircraft coming factory-fitted with radomes. Air India became the second when they switched on Wi-Fi on their international operations on November 7, 2024. I’ve tried it out a couple of times now, and here is everything there is to know so far.
Air India ties up with Panasonic Avionics and Nelco to offer Wi-Fi on board.
Air India has tied up with Nelco (another firm belonging to the Tata Group) and Panasonic Avionics to provide in-flight connectivity for its flights. Air India has an A350 fleet with six aircraft, 7 Boeing 787-9 aircraft, which it inherited from Vistara and 10 A321neo aircraft. These are all the Air India aircraft currently equipped with in-flight connectivity radomes.
Air India has now activated in-flight connectivity on their A350 aircraft and transitioned their Vistara-branded aircraft to their connectivity. Since the connectivity providers were the same, it would have been easy to transition to a new gating mechanism to validate customers. For now, this connectivity is being offered free of cost, unlike Vistara (which used to provide it on a paid basis).
If you have this connectivity option on your airplane, the connectivity APN is called Air India Wi-Fi.
You’ll see this page if your attempt to latch on is successful.
However, you still need to log in, and there are a couple of hoops to jump through. For instance, you need to select an option to connect. Air India will tell you that “The Internet” is available if you are in a zone where connectivity is available.
From there on, you go through a captcha code validation before being informed that you can connect to Wi-Fi, free of cost for now.
You need to validate your PNR and assigned seat before logging onto the network.
Performance of Air India’s new Vista Wi-Fi Service
Air India’s new Wi-Fi service is not bad in terms of speeds. Speedtest is usually not a great indicator due to the massive ping that onboard Wi-Fi involves, but here is how it looked on a flight between Delhi and Mumbai on board the A350.
It was much faster on board the Vistara Boeing 787-9 between London and Delhi last night. 
But here is the crazy thing. Video Streaming worked flawlessly on both days on this platform, and Air India has yet to block streaming. I hope it will not be a nuisance for co-travellers until it is shut down.
Customers of Air India love the new streaming facility so far.
guys im tweeting this while flying.
free wifi in Air India (a350)
good stuff pic.twitter.com/F7NPm3OeKk
— Yash Dixit (@yashhdixit) November 19, 2024
Experiencing the in-flight WiFi experience on Air India flight to Delhi!
Truly going to the change the experience of travel!
Internet at 30,000Ft!— Sanket Jha (@SanketJha6) November 11, 2024
And before you ask, Internet Voice Calls are working now. And they shouldn’t.
So here’s @airindia newest feature (thanks to @Vinamralongani for the tip): We have wifi enabled as of yesterday on their A350 fleet 🎉
Tweeting from over Central Europe. It seems like our flight is one of the first few beta testers, we have VoIP, ie WiFi calling. pic.twitter.com/Uq11fuGiWF
— Praneet Dutta (@praneetdutta) November 9, 2024
Bottomline
Air India has launched Wi-Fi on board their A350 aircraft and also migrated the Boeing 787-9s of Vistara to the new platform (with bandwidth from Panasonic Aero and gated by Nelco). The service is currently being offered free of charge to customers wh0 fly on board these aircraft.
What do you make of the new internet offerings from Air India?
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Great! Took long time.
But why shouldn’t Internet calls work though? I’ve had video calls on Qatar Airways and Wi-Fi based voice calls on Singapore Airlines (both on US leg though).
@U in principle video calls shouldn’t work anywhere in a public space. People are uncharitable with making other people suffer through the whole thing.