Does United Airlines Have Outlets On Board? What To Know Before You Fly

Frequent fliers know that you can't rely on in-flight entertainment to keep you entertained on long flights, but if your phone is dying, the seemingly fool-proof plan of downloading all your favorite shows before takeoff gets a lot trickier. Whether you're using a Kindle to catch up on your book club reads or taking advantage of the plane's Wi-Fi to send in-flight selfies to your group chat, you might end up needing to charge. A lot of airlines have you covered with outlets around your seat — but does United Airlines? The answer is usually, but unfortunately not always.

United Airlines has multiple types of airplanes in their fleet. Some, like the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, have power outlets and USB ports available throughout the plane. However, the Boeing 737-800 doesn't have USB ports and only has power outlets available in some cabins (and you can probably guess which cabins those are. Sorry, budget travelers.) Fortunately, United Airlines is in the process of modernizing their in-fight technology, so once they have upgraded their planes this may not be an issue. For now, however, you might want to double check which kind of plane you're going to be flying on, especially if you're flying domestic.

Most United Airlines flights do actually have outlets for personal charging, but they might be harder to find than you would think. Before giving up and assuming you're one of the unlucky passengers on a plane without outlets in economy, look under your seat. Lots of passengers seated in the bulkhead assume there's no way to charge in economy, but if you awkwardly bend all the way over, crouch in the area in front of your seat, or use your phone's camera to snap a pic, you'll see it. There is a little green light indicating where you can plug in. Unfortunately, whether it's easy to find or not, a lot of United passengers complain that the outlets can be finicky, so even if you have an outlet, there's no guarantee that you can juice up your devices easily.

United Airlines is working on upgrading their planes, so not only might you soon have access to free WiFi on United flights, you might actually be able to charge your phone even if you forgot your charging cable — at least if you're sitting in first class. United has started offering wireless charging stations to their elite passengers. For the rest of us, though, it might be best to pack a power bank, just in case.