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. As India enabled Internet in its skies, Vistara switched on their internet service onboard these aircraft and started to offer it complimentary on their flights from Delhi to London on the Boeing 787-9 aircraft. Vistara has been offering their internet connectivity ability free of charge from September 2020 onwards, as they operated flights under the air-bubble agreements.

Vistara pulls free wifi, introduces charges in April 2022

Vistara has pulled the free wifi connectivity in March 2022, which is provided to test the systems over a while. Moving forward, customers onboard Vistara will have to pay to be able to connect with the wifi services onboard its A321neo and Boeing 787-9 aircraft.

Vistara’s pricing for internet services comes at various slabs, which can be used, at best for messaging connectivity, but won’t be sufficient for customers to get work done or be connected through the duration of the flight. There are messaging plans, as well as surfing plans on offer, however, the data offered is going to be gone in a snap if you signed on. Here are the plans that Vistara is offering for onboard connectivity. These exclude the 18% tax that will be charged on top (India GST)

For reference, browsing Facebook using the mobile app will cost 1.5 MB per minute, so if you bought the top-end plan, you would have it finished up in two hours. And that is subject to the fact that you would have switched off all the other apps using data on your phone, in the background, such as Instagram or Whatsapp and your mail. So, a plan valid for the duration of the flight would have been nice, even if expensive.

Buying wifi

Pre-flight purchases of Wi-Fi service can be made with MasterCard (credit or debit), VISA (credit or debit), or RuPay. If you are looking to use wifi on board, and want to use an Indian credit card, you will have to purchase it before the flight takes off, because otherwise there will be an OTP asked of you, which you won’t be able to provide. Only internationally issued credit cards can be used to purchase Wi-Fi service during flights.

Once the transaction is completed, a voucher code will be generated based on the Wi-Fi plan you selected. You will need the voucher code to redeem for the Wi-Fi session during the flight, so do save the email to access the same on the flight. Voucher codes are valid for 3 months from the date of purchase and can be redeemed on Vistara international flights offering connectivity.

The connectivity will be available only for one device if you use it without creating an account for Vistara’s wifi. However, if you create the account for wifi, you will be able to switch devices as well.

Some customers will get free data on board

Customers travelling in Business Class and CV Platinum members will get 50 MB of free data that can be used on board. This can be redeemed via voucher codes received via email 24 hours prior to departure on the email address mentioned in the booking.

Bottomline

Vistara has started to charge for wifi services on board. The pricing looks good but the data limits look too low for business travellers, and will cause people to think twice before buying the connectivity.

What do you think of Vistara’s inflight wifi connectivity pricing?

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