How airlines make money from in-flight wifi
Every connected aircraft carries an ongoing service bill from its in-flight connectivity provider, whether passengers pay for wifi or get it free. Airlines cover it with paid passes, sponsors and loyalty sign-ins. A newer line is the trip itself: tours and activities at the destination, booked from the seat, with the airline earning on every one.
How do airlines pay for in-flight wifi today?
- Paid passes. Many airlines still sell an hour or a whole flight.
- A sponsor. T-Mobile on Southwest, free since October 24, 2025, and on Alaska and Hawaiian, where about 150 aircraft had Starlink by June 2026. AT&T on American since January 2026.
- The loyalty sign-in. Delta has given SkyMiles members free wifi since February 2023. United's Starlink service is free for MileagePlus members. Every sign-in is a member you can reach again.
- The portal. airBaltic's Starlink portal, Skynet, carries a shopping mall, hotels, car hire and attractions from its partners.
- Ads and paid entertainment. Sponsored space on the portal and streaming sold by the flight.
What's missing from that list?
Ads shoved in your face while you're tired, cramped on a plane feel pretty awful. Sponsors really should know that as well, and I can't recall any time in recent memory where I've had a good or even neutral experience with an advertised product during a flight.
Loyalty sign-ups usually mean the airline's program, or more often its credit card. By pitching the card over and over, airlines get to cash in on miles, and ultimately on the arbitrage of miles that never get paid out, while reaping the benefits of being a credit card. It's definitely lucrative, but it feels very much sided with the company if you don't know how to work the systems to your advantage.
With Triptimize, we've pushed toward giving travelers value no matter what experience level they have. If my 86 year old grandmother can't use it, it's still not good enough.
Mike Melichar, Co-Founder & CEO
Why sell tours in that session?
Onboard wifi being as good or better than your home internet is a major change in the way people operate in the sky. It gets to feel like an extension of home, albeit generally more cramped. The money side for airlines largely stays the same. They're still going to sell you premium snacks, seat upgrades, drinks, extra bags, etc., but we're giving airlines the opportunity to step up and take a slice of the market that exists after they get you from point A to B.
Airlines run on razor thin margins. We're giving them back the ability to make real profits again through getting a cut of an ancillary line they've not been able to fully capitalize on.
Mike Melichar, Co-Founder & CEO
That market is large and still mostly offline. Travelers spent $271 billion on tours, activities and attractions in 2025, and the figure is projected to reach $342 billion in 2029 (Arival and Phocuswright). A third of it is booked online, against 64% for travel overall. Airline ancillary revenue was $148.4 billion in 2024 (IdeaWorksCompany and CarTrawler).
For the connectivity provider, a session that earns is a fleet that renews. A white-label tours and activities booking layer on the wifi portal lets the airline monetize the wifi session, free or paid, and an airline making money from its connection has every reason to keep it and to connect more aircraft.
Why would a passenger plan on the plane?
Most of this spending is still undecided at boarding. Four separate data sets say so.
- Google found that 48% of experience bookings happen after travelers arrive at their destination.
- Arival's survey of U.S. travelers at the end of 2025 had 63% of tours booked inside a week of taking them, and 17% on the day.
- In 2017, Phocuswright put 53% of activity bookings inside a week and 38% inside two days, with 19% made more than a month ahead.
- Booking data from the reservation system Rezgo showed the same back in 2010: 52% inside a week of travel.
The flight is a window where they don't have much else to do, and we're giving them a fun way to grab not only that tour or experience, but maaaybe one more. I know I wish I had this when I was on a 16 hour flight to Hong Kong to save $300 when going to Japan the first time (entirely separate mistake here!) and had nothing to do for so long that I couldn't sleep any more.
Mike Melichar, Co-Founder & CEO
What does the passenger see?
First tap in, you're asked about your trip. We grab the current destination as an option so it's a single tap away, but this is a little bit of qualified onboarding, you type a bit to our AI that gets you started on a custom user experience. You get loaded in to a screen that's half-map, half-swipe cards. The swipe cards show you pictures of the place, the reviews, a summary of the place, if you're close enough to the booking date you get to see the weather in your destination for the upcoming trip so you know you're not going to get rained out on your outdoor experience day, or can plan to move it.
At every step of the journey, we've anticipated the users' needs and baked it in to a wholly encompassing visual user experience that leverages AI where it should be in travel planning: on the back end, reserving the tickets, coordinating a batch email to the user, following up with the user if anything changes about their reservation proactively, or planning the whole thing in the first place in a way that makes sense, and readjusting if the user doesn't want it planned how the AI thought to plan it originally. At the end of the day, planning your travel shouldn't feel like a chore, it should feel like a small precursor of the fun you're about to have on your trip.
Mike Melichar, Co-Founder & CEO
It opens from a banner or tile on your wifi portal, in your brand, with no account and nothing to download. One payment covers everything the passenger picked.
Why not add a marketplace tile?
Some airlines already have. TUI passengers can browse more than 1,500 TUI Musement experiences on 59 aircraft and get a payment link by email after landing. airBaltic's Skynet portal shows attractions from its partners, and its tours partner is GetYourGuide.
Do you want to actually capture user intent and real, relevant data on why these people are actually going to these locations in your CRM for relevant retargeting campaigns? Do you want to capture way more money than working through a B2C company that has barely any margin left for you guys? We work as close to the tour and experience operators themselves as possible. If you want real money, let's talk.
Mike Melichar, Co-Founder & CEO
With Triptimize the plan and the booking go to your CRM. Tours come from 90,000 providers worldwide through our booking partner, who is the merchant of record and handles every refund and support request.
What did a year of real travelers show?
Triptimize ran as a consumer app before it moved to airlines.
We shipped an app that was what we do now in its infancy and learned iteratively what gets users engaged with the platform and what keeps them engaged all the way through onboarding and through actually building the whole trip. We also learned something really critical: once someone builds one trip, there's a HIGH likelihood that they build another through our platform, with power users building dozens of trips.
Mike Melichar, Co-Founder & CEO
- 85% of people who signed up built a trip.
- Close to three in ten of them came back and built another.
- The average itinerary held about 20 places across about 8 days.
- Three in ten trips covered more than one destination.
- In December 2025, travelers built about six times as many trips as the month before.
What have airlines got wrong about selling past the seat?
In the past, airlines tried to sell physical goods to people, which somewhat worked, but the companies behind them were selling physical goods through an airline, with a massive COGS overhead eating at them. We operate outside that crushing weight.
Mike Melichar, Co-Founder & CEO
Who is using it?
We're choosing our first airline and wifi partners now. Try the demo at demo.triptimize.app, then book a call.
Sources
- Arival and Phocuswright, "The Outlook for Travel Experiences 2019 to 2029", February 2026 Link
- Phocuswright, "Tours and activities are outgrowing travel overall", July 2026, with the Arival survey of U.S. and European travelers, fourth quarter 2025 Link
- IdeaWorksCompany and CarTrawler, worldwide estimate of airline ancillary revenue for 2024
- Afar, free in-flight wifi at Delta, United, American, Southwest, Alaska and Hawaiian, September 5, 2025 Link
- World Airline News, American Airlines launches free Wi-Fi sponsored by AT&T, January 6, 2026 Link
- Alaska Airlines newsroom, T-Mobile and Starlink, August 20, 2025 Link
- Migflug, Alaska and Hawaiian reach about 150 Starlink aircraft, June 30, 2026 Link
- Google, Think with Google, travel experience marketing (48% of experience bookings after arrival)
- TrekkSoft, citing Phocuswright, last-minute booking trends for tours and activities, 2017 Link
- PhocusWire, Rezgo booking data on in-destination bookings, 2010 Link
- Future Travel Experience, airBaltic Skynet on Starlink, March 25, 2026 Link
- airBaltic, partner services (GetYourGuide for tours and activities) Link
- TUI Group newsroom, digital in-flight experience with TUI Musement Link