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WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

jamesbvaughan.com

81–90 of 675 posts

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#81
post #72

I'm an Alaska (relatively) frequent flyer. That airline offers a free "messaging" plan, that lets you send and receive messages on apps like iMessage, Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp. Though, it somehow prevents images/attachments from coming through on those platforms. I've always wondered how this is implemented technically, and if it might be possible to setup some kind of protocol/wrapper to send data that looks…

I used to work at WhatsApp (until the end of 2019) on many things, including special pricing (aka zero rating); we did not work with airlines, and would not have participated in a project where messages and attachments where treated differently. That said, technically there's two pretty easy ways to do it for WhatsApp traffic, and then there's the way I suspect they're doing it... a) chat runs on different ips than a…

> WA chat is not HTTPS (or even TLS)

If you don’t mind, could you expend on this? Are there specific reasons to not be using TLS?

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

United wifi is similar. I've found that notifications work for most things, including my Home Assistant instance—they must all use the same Apple push service.

On iOS all notifications have to use Apple's Push service. And the WiFi essentially has to allow the Apple push notification system entirely in order for iMessage to work fully the way people expect. So it's really a side effect. But yeah for example with the free iMessage connection on Southwest, I can see all the notifications come in on Discord, but of course I cannot connect within the discord app to actually loa…

>On iOS all notifications have to use Apple's Push service.

Have to? Isn't there an option to send 'offline' notification? I mean, coming from the app itself, rather then external callback? With that, app could ommit the official way of using Apple Push service, no?

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#84
post #72

I'm an Alaska (relatively) frequent flyer. That airline offers a free "messaging" plan, that lets you send and receive messages on apps like iMessage, Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp. Though, it somehow prevents images/attachments from coming through on those platforms. I've always wondered how this is implemented technically, and if it might be possible to setup some kind of protocol/wrapper to send data that looks…

I used to work at WhatsApp (until the end of 2019) on many things, including special pricing (aka zero rating); we did not work with airlines, and would not have participated in a project where messages and attachments where treated differently. That said, technically there's two pretty easy ways to do it for WhatsApp traffic, and then there's the way I suspect they're doing it... a) chat runs on different ips than a…

[deleted]

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#85

I want to see someone build a proxy that uses the free iMessage or WhatsApp allowed connection to send arbitrary data. Like have a WhatsApp relay set up at home that you are sending messages to and from, from the plane. Like at a most basic level, send a message of a URL to your home WhatsApp which loads the web page there, and sends the HTML back as a WhatApp message reply so you can render it etc. Wonder what someo…

I've noticed that airline wifi doesn't block DNS traffic. You can likely accomplish the same thing with a DNS tunnel like Iodine (https://github.com/yarrick/iodine).

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#86

If you travel lite with clothes in a book bag(wash clothes if extended stay)… I don't see why anyone would fly United, Southwest, American Airlines, etc VS.the budget Airlines like Spirit. Maybe if you have points with those airlines… Otherwise, save hundreds of dollars using budget airlines which the planes are newer in my experience, and never had a bad experience versus my recent bad experiences with Delta and the…

Sometimes the budget airlines don't fly to where I'm going, or do so by long multi connecting routes. I'm currently sitting on an AA flight because it was the cheapest option with a reasonable travel time. Honestly, it kind of sucks for all the usual reasons, but I've at least got free wifi on my phone through some deal with T-Mobile.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#87
Here is how to get the equivalent data on a Delta flight.

    $ curl https://wifi.delta.com/api/flight-data | jq
      % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                     Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
    100   448  100   448    0     0   5600      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--  5743
    {
      "timestamp": "2023-07-11T14:54:41Z",
      "eta": "17:48",
      "flightDuration": 278,
      "flightNumber": "DAL786",
      "latitude": 39.723472595214844,
      "longitude": -97.1514205932617,
      "noseId": "3879",
      "paState": false,
      "vehicleId": "N879DN",
      "destination": "KPDX",
      "origin": "KATL",
      "flightId": "N879DN_SF_20230711121358",
      "airspeed": null,
      "airTemperature": 24,
      "altitude": 33922,
      "distanceToGo": 179,
      "doorState": "Closed",
      "groundspeed": 442,
      "heading": -73,
      "timeToGo": 174,
      "wheelWeightState": "Off"
    }
And a fun snippet for you.

    $ curl -s https://wifi.delta.com/api/flight-data | jq -r '"https://maps.google.com/?q=", .latitude, ",", .longitude' | tr -d '\n'; echo
    https://maps.google.com/?q=40.5615234375,-101.2824478149414

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#88
post #2

Reminds me of the time I dumped CANbus data off a Yamaha R1 bike, made sense of the data, and displayed it on a bunch of charts. Interesting data like Accelerator Handle position, you can figure out how much a rider is really cranking it, and how aggressive they are riding.

... Which is precisely the data those data loggers you plug in from insurance companies track to adjust/refine your rates .....

I did one of those once and tried for three months to drive really carefully.

in Boston.

it basically broke me and my driving sanity for 6+ months and made me a really worse driver for a while, maybe permanently?? and my rate basically didn't change at all.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#90
post #80

It is just 8 bucks for the full service... just buy the internet bro. It is actually pretty good.

Sure. But you’re on a site called “Hacker News”. I’m not sure that there’s a more perfect topic of discussion for a site with that name.
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