GENEVA AND MANILA – 15 March 2016 – Philippine Airlines (PAL) has launched a freemium Wi-Fi service for all passengers as part of its 75th anniversary celebration. PAL is using SITAONAIR’s Internet Onair technology to deliver the service, rebranded as myPAL Wi-fi.
Jaime J. Bautista, PAL president and COO said: “This myPAL Wi-fi freemium offering is a key part of our commitment to give the best possible service to our passengers. With 30 minutes each across all travel classes, this is the APAC region’s best free inflight internet offering, at least doubling almost every other airline.”
In addition to myPAL Wi-fi, PAL also offers myPAL Mobile* and myPAL Player** on enabled flights.
The Philippine flag carrier also has the region’s second highest proportion of connected jets in its long-haul fleet. It’s also one of only 11 airlines to have passenger Wi-Fi on over two-thirds of its long-haul fleet.
The airline launched the freemium service to passengers on the first of March and this offering will continue to run for one year. The airline has 21 aircraft equipped with connectivity, including six B777-300ER and 15 A330-300s.
The freemium service launch follows the successful roll-out of SITAONAIR’s award winning new generation inflight portal, which simplifies the sign-up procedure on mobile devices and allows for a greater level of personalised content to be delivered to the passenger.
Bautista continued: “This [freemium service] is the next phase in our roll out, the new generation inflight portal being the first. It was a great success in enabling us to have a better understanding our passengers’ needs and allowing us to give a more personalised, more context-based offering - with premium content that suits their needs and requirements.”
Recent analysis by SITAONAIR showed 69% of passengers actively use their personal devices during the flight. The number of Wi-Fi adoptions increases tenfold when connections are free, and 83 percent of sessions are on smartphones (10% tablets, 7% laptops).
François Rodriguez, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at SITAONAIR said: “Free Wi-Fi is a big trend right now. This not only gives airlines a wealth of great data about their passengers, which they can use to more effectively market their services, it accompanies an increase in premium subscriptions and we’re getting anecdotal evidence that it also leads to an improved relationship with the cabin crew.”
* myPAL Mobile is an inflight GSM roaming service that allows passenger to make calls, send text messages and tweets using their own mobile/smart devices.
** myPAL Player allows passengers to access multimedia files stored on a server in the aircraft using their own Wi-Fi enabled personal device (laptop, tablet or smartphone).
