SWISS to offer free long-haul messaging as it revamps its connectivity options

SWISS International Air Lines is revamping its inflight connectivity prices from 2nd August onwards – with a free option, as well as paid options.

SWISS Airbus A330-300 climbing out of Zurich Airport – Image, Economy Class and Beyond

First up is the free level, which will enable the use of chat apps from the 2nd of August 2023.

The new facility will allow passengers in all classes of travel to send and receive free text and picture messages via their smartphone, laptop or tablet throughout their flight. The facility will offer access to all the most popular chat and messenger services such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Telegram.

Meanwhile, for those who need to be connected, two other options will be available, as shown below.

There are two options for those who need full-fat connectivity:

• Wi-Fi 4 hours – lasting four hours through a flight for CHF 25 (£23/USD$29/€26).
• Wi-Fi Premium – lasting for an entire flight for CHF 35 (£31/USD$40/€37)

Travellers in First Class and HON Circle Members enjoy unlimited internet access throughout their time aloft.

All the new services – the free chat option and the supplementary Wi-Fi 4 Hours and Wi-Fi Premium packages – offer unlimited data volumes, enabling even data-heavy content to be easily consumed.

Only video streaming services will be deactivated, to ensure that adequate bandwidth is simultaneously available for as many passengers as possible. Videos on social media platforms will be playable and audio streaming, cloud services and VPN services will all be offered.

All travellers will also be able to read the digital SWISS Magazine on their device at any time, without any connectivity plan.

In Quotes

SWISS Chief Commercial Officer Tamur Goudarzi Pour said:

“In offering these new wi-fi options we’re taking a big step forward,”

“With our new unlimited free chat facility in all our travel classes, our guests can keep in contact with their families, friends and business partners throughout their flight. Our attractive new packages for surfing, email and social media also offer unlimited data volumes. So our customers now have even more choice in how they wish to stay in unbounded touch with the world while they are aboard our long-haul flights.”

And goodbye to the “Per Megabye” nonsense

Per-Megabyte pricing is easy for an airline. You pop a meter on the paid account and watch it go down, knowing costs are well contained. Meanwhile, who knows what consumes a megabyte these days? Web pages have become feature-rich and application-driven, downloading content as you go.

Here’s SWISS’s current pricing:

From https://www.swiss.com/gb/en/fly/on-board/entertainment-on-board 

Per Megabyte pricing for most passengers is hard – how long does a megabyte last? How big is the content I’m downloading? And so on.

Moving to flat tiers may cost slightly more (depending on how the airline billed) – and SWISS’s options are not cheap (although they come out the same as American Airlines charge on a long-haul flight), but it provides reassurance that a passenger can carry on with what they want to do on the internet – without the fear of ” running out of data” mid-flight and having to fish out their credit card to continue what they were doing.