Is Singapore Airlines’ in-flight Wi-Fi really good? Ookla finds out
Airline operators are realising that in-flight Wi-Fi is in demand, but which airline has the best Wi-Fi speeds?
Speed testing and network optimisation company Ookla uploaded a speedtest report that explores the differences in in-flight Wi-Fi services across popular consumer airlines. The list comprises national flagship or full-fledged carriers, which means our dearest Singapore Airlines is in there, somewhere.
Is in-flight Wi-Fi even important? That depends on who you ask, but current sentiments lean towards a “yes”. The American Customer Satisfaction Index for airlines added in-flight Wi-Fi as a quality indicator this year, and its maiden debut saw it place dead last in satisfaction.
That means surveyed fliers across the board said that in-flight Wi-Fi feels less satisfactory than the timeliness of flights, baggage handling, and even the quality of the in-flight food and seats.
What constitutes “good” in-flight Wi-Fi?
The data in Ookla’s in-flight Wi-Fi report is collected in Q1 2025. It shows ranges of Wi-Fi performance on a per-airline basis, from its best (90th percentile) to its worst (10th percentile), and the median quality (50th percentile), to paint a picture of consistency and reliability.
The numbers are not a flat average, as the connection can be better at times and completely unusable in other situations, due to various factors (such as weather, airspace regulations in specific countries, whether it’s a satellite or a ground-to-air connection, and more).
Enough yapping, I want to see how good SQ’s in-flight Wi-Fi can be
Upload speeds (Mbps) showing the worst, best, and median performance per airline. The longer the bar, the better its performance.
According to Ookla’s findings, Singapore Airlines’ (SQ) download speeds appear average, with in-flight Wi-Fi performing similarly to other flagship carriers (like EVA Air). SQ’s Wi-Fi is slightly better than Cathay Pacific’s or Japan Airlines’.
However, a closer look reveals that Wi-Fi on SQ is one of the better ones among APAC-based carriers, only behind its Middle Eastern rivals.
The best performers, such as Qatar Airways and Hawaiian Airlines, have up to 4-5 times the download speed (relatively) during their best connectivity, and also ~6x the speeds for median performance. We suspect that Hawaiian Airlines’ 10th-percentile performance is so high because it primarily flies between the islands of Hawaii and the U.S. mainland, with only a handful of routes extending to other destinations (such as Japan and South Korea), resulting in fewer networking complications / more consistency.
Upload speeds (Mbps) showing the worst, best, and median performance per airline. The longer the bar, the better its performance.
In upload speeds, Singapore Airlines is also in the middle of the pack, with its nearest neighbour, Malaysian Airlines, boasting 4.94Mbps and 5.44Mbps, respectively. The chart toppers are once again Hawaiian Airlines and Qatar Airways.
Latency (ms) showing the worst, best, and median performance per airline. The shorter the bar, the better its performance.
Latency performance (also known as lag) could be better. Singapore Airlines is, unfortunately, very laggy, placing near the bottom. It is only better than three other airlines on the list: Finnair, Malaysian Airlines, and Air India.
At a median of 876ms and up to 1,786ms latency, you can forget about playing any mobile games that require teamwork and reflexes. We’re glad that it means other passengers cannot video call loudly and give us TMI tidbits of their unfulfilled lives. That also means no Zoom Meetings while flying, too.
Why are some airlines so fast, and why do others have similar Wi-Fi performance?
Connecting to in-flight Wi-Fi.
The quality of the airline’s Wi-Fi connection during flights depends on its choice of in-flight Internet Service Provider (ISP). Just like how you pay telcos and ISPs for your home broadband and mobile plans, airlines have a few service providers to choose from and offer to their passengers.
Each ISP may use different connectivity technologies to get Wi-Fi while in flight, and some connections are newer, faster, older, or slower. According to Ookla’s report, Lufthansa utilises an LTE ground-to-air network, which explains the slow 3.91Mbps connection.
Meanwhile, Singapore Airlines uses the same Panasonic Avionics Corporation vendor that’s also serving 25+ other airlines (many of them flagship carriers). Hence, their performance are all similar, if not identical.
Only a small handful are using satellite networks, and there are no prizes if you guessed that Hawaiian Airlines and Qatar Airways are both using satellite-based SpaceX Starlink to service their passengers’ Wi-Fi needs.
Source: Ookla