Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Inflight Wifi Works

thepointsguy.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 129 posts

Re: How Inflight Wifi Works

#61

Post by serf »

dheera wrote: post #57

"Prior to the integration of in-flight Wi-Fi, most airline passengers passed their time at 30,000 feet completely disconnected from the world below them — but these days, that’s a highly uncommon occurrence." Am I missing something here? 99% of the flights I take don't offer Wi-Fi, and in most cases not even power outlets. And those that do have Wi-Fi seem to be charging 30% of my monthly internet bill to provide it…

You're one of the lucky ones. Almost all my flights have power outlets, which means that some stranger is going to be rooting around my ankles trying to find the damn outlet for the first 20 minutes of the voyage.

Re: How Inflight Wifi Works

#62

Post by kozukumi »

colmvp wrote: post #40

Of all the things I want on a plane, WiFi ranks a lot lower than having a consistent power outlet at my seat. There's nothing worse than having Wifi but a laptop that can only last a % of the flight.

Business idea -

Free WiFi on all flights as part of your ticket price!

Mains power supply provided for $30/hour ;)

New TSA policy: Li-ion/Li-poly/etc batteries cannot be more than 20% charged for safety.

Re: How Inflight Wifi Works

#63

Post by kozukumi »

jzwinck wrote: post #58
colmvp wrote: post #40

Of all the things I want on a plane, WiFi ranks a lot lower than having a consistent power outlet at my seat. There's nothing worse than having Wifi but a laptop that can only last a % of the flight.

Emirates' largest planes have universal AC outlets on most seatbacks, as well as USB. They also have WiFi: no charge for 10 MB and $1 for 600 MB. All of that in economy class.

$1/600MB is a better deal that a lot of home-based internet access in Australia!

Re: How Inflight Wifi Works

#64

Post by tbomb »

dheera wrote: post #57

"Prior to the integration of in-flight Wi-Fi, most airline passengers passed their time at 30,000 feet completely disconnected from the world below them — but these days, that’s a highly uncommon occurrence." Am I missing something here? 99% of the flights I take don't offer Wi-Fi, and in most cases not even power outlets. And those that do have Wi-Fi seem to be charging 30% of my monthly internet bill to provide it…

While its been a long time since I've been on an airplane _without_ Wi-Fi, I don't often see power outlets. And as you alluded to, most of the time its $10 for the duration of that flight, whether its 5 hours or 30 minutes.

Re: How Inflight Wifi Works

#65

Post by kozukumi »

mbesto wrote: post #23
degenerate wrote: post #6

Jet Blue just rolled out free wifi to most of their US-based flights... and while it was pretty slow, I could still RDP into my work computer to answer emails and read HN. That was pretty sweet. You can pay $10 to get "gaming" speeds but I didn't test it out. I'd imagine most pings being >200ms. Has anyone tried it out?

I use airline wifi quite a bit. This has been my experience: Gogo (Delta/American/Virgin) - Meh (anywhere between 50-1000 KB/s) United - Mostly crap (anywhere between 5-200 KB/s) Jet Blue - Free tier was pretty solid (anywhere between 500-1500 KB/s)

Damn you make me feel old saying "meh" to ~1MB/s internet access while flying at 500+mph at 30,500+ feet over the earth.

Something about my lawn...

Re: How Inflight Wifi Works

#66

Post by djloche »

rconti wrote: post #36
greggyb wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American travelers tend to purchase tickets based solely on price. If your consumers are very price conscious, you move as much as you can out of the base price. Don't blame airlines in the US, blame airline customers. Personally, I like the nickel-and-dime scheme, as you call it. I rarely take cross country flights. My typical travel is 3-4 hours of flying at the most. I absolutely prefer a cheaper base ticket price…

They haven't even bothered to try. 3" more legroom for $40? No. Human-sized seat? I'd pay double the price. But I'm not going to pay 5x as much.

Alaska Airlines has more often than not convinced me to upgrade to first class. The one way ticket will be ~$100-150 steerage and ~$200 for first class, which gets me that human sized seat and personal space, usb and standard power. That upgrade is worth it to me. $50-100 to reduce my anxiety for a few hours? sold.

Re: How Inflight Wifi Works

#67

Post by tbomb »

untog wrote: post #44
colmvp wrote: post #40

Of all the things I want on a plane, WiFi ranks a lot lower than having a consistent power outlet at my seat. There's nothing worse than having Wifi but a laptop that can only last a % of the flight.

I'd love to see an airline get rid of seat back TVs entirely and just provide power outlets instead. There are already systems that let you stream movies for free over in-flight wi-fi - given that most of us have a smartphone (if not a bigger screened device) the experience would probably be better. Would suck for those without smartphones, though. Maybe they could lend out crappy Android tablets to that minority of…

I was recently on an Alaskan Air flight which did just that. It had no TV's on the plane, but power outlets right on the back of the seat. For all of their in flight entertainment, they directed you to their app or site once you connected to the in flight Wi-Fi (for free). I ended up not using it and reading instead (the free content wasn't great) but I really liked the idea and it seemed to work great just poking around, as I did.

Re: How Inflight Wifi Works

#68

Post by scholia »

ghaff wrote: post #16
pavel_lishin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do while you're disconnected? (Other than sleep, I assume that the London->San Francisco flight is probably over eight hours.

Closer to 12 hours. Read, watch videos that I've downloaded (unless there are on-demand movies), listen to music/podcasts, play games on my tablet, snooze. Maybe it's just a function of traveling a lot but I've pretty much got a system down for my in-flight entertainment. I don't really care that much about in-flight Wi-Fi. Sometimes I really need to work on something but generally I find it's hard to use a laptop on…

A 10-12 hour flight (or two) is a great chance to do something that wouldn't fit easily into a normal day. You could read Moby-Dick while listening to the Messiah, or something. Bach Cantantas are good, if you like that sort of thing, because there's a couple of hundred of them.

I tend to pack a readable novel (Gaiman, Stephenson, Pratchett or whatever), and it's amazing how fast the time goes. Start reading when you leave for the airport, read it while in queues etc. I read the Harry Potter series that way.

Those of us who still have laptops with proper email clients can also use long flights to dispose of not-so-urgent emails, the only problem being that a lot of people will reply ;-)

Re: How Inflight Wifi Works

#70

Post by scholia »

rhino369 wrote: post #60
TeMPOraL wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do these people also forgo packing a suitcase and just rebuy everything as needed? I've heard that it's actually a pretty viable travel strategy in some areas of the world.

I know people who do that when they come visit America from the EU. High end brands are a lot cheaper here.

They don't even have to be high-end brands. Don't think I've ever bought Levi's shirts or jeans in the UK....
Post reply on HN