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WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

jamesbvaughan.com

281–290 of 675 posts

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#281
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone will probably figure out how to send a request to disable auto-pilot or turn off the fasten seat belt sign.

the airline industry is nowhere nearly as stupid as the software industry with things like this. the communication between plane and wifi/entertainment system, if there is any, is almost certainly one-way. likely, the wifi system providing this info is receiving data from the flight systems and repeating it or transforming it a bit and providing that. it would not surprise me at all if the flight attendants have to p…

If the latter was true, then "wheelWeightState" (and others) would not work. But, they do work.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that an American thing? Absolutely paying for the water here.

On planes? Seriously? Where?

Recently on a 3 hour flight with ROM air I had to pay for water... not even a single glass for free.

Was quite shocked.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#284
post #136

“According to this data, the plane’s altitude was only fluctuating by about 20-30 feet. This is more stable than I expected!” Autopilots are very good and they are servoing to the pressure altitude. Many pressure altitude encoders used in modern aircraft (for example to drive altitudes that transponders report to SSR radar or via ADS-B) have 25 ft encoding resolution. That 25ft resolution is likely what is being seen…

I don't know what sensors are feeding the API from the post, but most passenger jets do broadcast information about the accuracy of their sensed position, including vertical position/altitude. If you click on an aircraft on the map at https://globe.adsbexchange.com/, and scroll the left sidebar all the way to the bottom you'll see a section labeled "Accuracy". ADS-B Exchange doesn't show Rc/v, the vertical position accuracy, but it does show other values. See https://mode-s.org/decode/content/ads-b/7-uncertainty.html for more information.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#285

When my son was younger - maybe 9 or 10 or so, we were on a plane and he was using his phone and I looked over his shoulder and realized he was on the internet... but I hadn't paid for an internet plan. I said, "son, how are you using the internet?" He said, "oh, a kid at school showed me - if you go here" (he opened up the wifi settings where the DHCP assigned IP address is) "and start changing the numbers, eventual…

lol, I used to do this all the time at non-free wifi hotspot locations, only I'd start off with a ping sweep of the entire subnet (nmap -sP) in order to get my ARP cache filled with a bunch of potential usable IP/mac addresses on the network. From there, I'd iterate through each one and set the IP & mac address until I found one that would let me through the firewall.

Granted, being a NOC engineer at Wayport (now AT&T WiFi) certainly helped me understand how it all works.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#286
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt Delta made this. It’s an official the shelf product that can do ships, trains, planes, etc.

But they also have airplane/flight specific identifiers like “flightNumber”, “flightId”, “noseId(?)” and “airSpeed”. Maybe vehicleId is part of a base class or primary key somewhere and that abstraction is leaking.

Hey, a train has airspeed. :)

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elevation is relative to sea level, not the ground.

The plane is measuring altitude , which is relative to a reference point, unlike elevation which is relative to sea level. And if the altitude is determined by pressure sensor, musn't it be relative to the ground directly below the plane, anyway? (Although personally, I agree with the sibling comment that the variability is likely an artifact of the sensor resolution.)

It's relative to sea level. After transition altitude (18k feet in most places) the pressure setting to the altimeter is changed to standard (iirc 1013 hPa) so all aircrafts are in the same reference regardless of terrain.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must have buns of steel. I flew Spirit exactly once (well, twice, it was round-trip), and it was such a miserable experience I swore to never do it again. Their seats are made of concrete as far as I can tell. For domestic flights I pretty much always sit in the window and never get up during the flight. On spirit I had to get up and walk around after about 3 hours 'cause my ass was sore. Never again.

Did you have a negative view of Spirit before flying with them? Not sure about my backside.. don't do squats lol ... 5'10 170

Not terribly negative, but yeah I always assumed it was cheap for a reason. I think I'd probably do a 1-2 hour flight on spirit if it was a good deal. Past that I'll spend a little money for a more comfortable flight... Guess I could also just bring a cushion on board with me lol

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#290

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…

> "airspeed": null

[nervously looks out window]

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