As you may have heard, the Southwest Airlines WiFi Hotspot continues to pick up speed with more and more WiFi-equipped aircraft ready for take-off! We have over 150 WiFi-enabled planes within the Southwest 737-700 fleet. What you might not have heard is that over the last few months, we’ve been hard at work evolving the product to deliver a highly impactful Inflight Experience for you, our Customers.
We recently enhanced the WiFi portal to make it a more user-friendly interface, with a sleek new design that creatively incorporates the Southwest Spirit. The newer look and feel allows us to highlight key products and offerings and gives us a better foundation with which to introduce new content in the future. Within the portal, users can enjoy games, shopping, southwest.com, and a flight tracker all free of charge.
Also, over the past few weeks we have teamed up with Chase to give Customers complimentary WiFi! This offer is made possible to anyone who successfully completes and submits a Rapid Rewards® Chase Visa credit card application while inflight. The Chase offer is currently live and will run through the first week of March. Get connect for FREE next time you travel with us on a WiFi-equipped aircraft!
And it gets even better! We have partnered with MapQuest to evolve our flight tracker for a much more dynamic offering. We realize the flight tracker is a popular element of the WiFi portal, which signaled an opportunity to make this a robust experience as well. Customers began to see the new flight tracker in December 2011 and it will be on all WiFi-enabled aircraft by mid-late January.
Another exciting technology driven enhancement to mention would be the launch of a ‘WiFi Finder’ on southwest.com/wifi. This tool allows you to see if your flights have WiFi up to 24 hours before departure. The only information you need to check your flight is a confirmation number, first name and last name.
Lastly, as a benefit of their tier status, A-List Preferred Members receive complimentary access just by logging in with their Rapid Rewards account information. Look for the “Connect Free” button on the “Get WiFi” page within the portal.
Power up those tablets and charge those mobile devices because you’re going to need it on your next WiFi-enabled flight!