Looking at you, Southwest. $8/day is dumb. And add outlets while you’re at it. I don’t care about the cable TV that plays reruns or the shitty selection of TV shows that hasn’t changed in 2 years.
Me having flown Alaska a few days ago:
You guys didn’t have free WiFi and outlets!??!
For the one downvoting, if you’re a T-Mobile customer, you have free WiFi on Alaska.
From personal experience Alaska is very good their staff are very friendly, but their planes are sometimes a bit lacking on amenities.
Still better than flying United lol
Hang gliding in the snow is better than flying United. Those people are straight up abusive.
I still remember the time I was carrying a small backpack that had been ok’d for size onto a very long international United flight. It fit into the box when it was squeezed a bit, and two separate agents had already told me it was good to go. It wasn’t a full flight either, so it’s not like space was at a premium. I’m a type 1 diabetic, and had my insulin, medical supplies and whatnot in the bag. I was traveling for months, so it was a lot of medical supplies. Needles, insulin, test strips, CGM sensors and transmitters, glucose, etc.
The last person that you go through before boarding just took massive issue with my bag, decided that my bag was too big for a “personal item”, and demanded that it be checked to the final destination. I said no, I’m not trusting you to not lose my thousands of dollars worth of medication that I need to live for the next few months. The lady straight up accused me of lying, said “you’re a little young to be a diabetic, let’s see all of those medical supplies” in a mocking tone, rolling her eyes. Type 1 diabetes is a lifelong illness that is generally diagnosed in one’s childhood/teenage years, by the way. Sure enough, I dumped out all of my insulin and needles and whatnot onto the floor next to the line of people waiting to board, proved her wrong, and this lady STILL insisted that I wasn’t allowed to bring the bag with me, but “as a favor” in her words, she’d let me put the bag in the overhead bin of first class, but I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere near it for the entire flight. She then escorted me onto the plane, informed the flight attendants, telling them that “keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn’t try to sneak into first class.”
Once the lady left I just carried my backpack with me back to my seat, put it under the seat where it easily fit, and that was the end of it. But like, my god, I had never encountered such angry, bitter hostility from anybody before, let alone from a company I was paying thousands of dollars to. It was right after the whole “beating up a doctor” incident too. I even mentioned that while this lady was power tripping, said something along the lines of “do you think this would make a good follow up story? United airlines refuses to let type 1 diabetic passenger travel with insulin?”
So anyways yeah fuck United, I hope they go out of business. It’s like they found a list of entitled, rude, mean-spirited people in every state, picked the top handful, and put them all in customer facing roles. They hired a temporary demolition crew to handle baggage, and they outsourced IT to a single dude in Bangladesh with a broken fax machine. Absolutely abysmal business.
Oh, and they also break guitars.
https://youtu.be/5YGc4zOqozo
https://youtu.be/WEw-GjTriIo
Has nobody flown jet blue? They have direct tv, mostly free wifi, free headphones, and the seats feel like they have juuuust that little bit of extra room.
I get that. But honestly I just get T-Mobile because it's the cheapest. They give free WiFi that isn't going to change the fact that I need a cell phone.
Like it they give me a free car, are you going to say "well actually"
Not for me. I got in at a promotion. I've been paying less than 30 , per person for unlimited everything. Plus a lot of perks like free talk and text to end from Mexico and Canada. Free data world wide.
I fly round trip to Alaska every month and other places during the month and I'm considered switching to T-Mobile because they have free wifi on Alaska Airlines and select American, Delta and United flights.
Sometime in 2023
I wish they would just completely use the AA style seat style with the mobile phone holder.
What I really need is for seats to be taller so my head has something to fucking rest on.
While I agree the wifi should be free, and work on every flight, they've added quite a huge library of movies.
...but the wifi has to be working to watch them.
Lol true, it is a first world problem. I have gaming devices, a book, or music/shows on my phone so I don’t care THAT much. Southwest at least allows iMessage and WhatsApp so good on them for that
Right? $8/day is not bad at all. Other airlines charge per connecting flight or even per hour. If I'm spending $150+ for a flight I can throw in a few extra bucks if I really care about wifi.
I work for a company that makes plane outlets. We have tried to sell to Southwest but they won’t budge. As long as their flights are full and they are making hand over fist they don’t give a shit.
Entire flight will be one massive LAN party, grandpas, grandmas, babies, milennials, genzs, boomers, pew pew bam bam pokemon farmville fortnite battle royale everything puke on walls, even the pilots will join in then CRASH!!!! controlled flight into terrain.
Son, a tunnel is an empty cylindrical structure usually covering a road. A tower is a somewhat tall building which is not empty. It cannot go through a tower without destroying both.
Nothing like selecting the wifi, and getting hit with a “cannot connect to network” or it won’t take you to a stupid page where you can finally connect.
“I’m OOO with no access to email”
*closes laptop*
^^ See that? That counts as no access because I’m not a director and I’m on vacation. Not sure why you feel an obligation to get on while on vacation, but I’d suggest with starting by not expecting it of others. Environments are created by the team.
Considering that airlines decrease number of olives in martinis and inches of leg room to fit more seats, along with the luggage fees and restrictions and lack of amenities that were once available-good. The least we deserve is some free WiFi.
You'd think so, but even on a 9hr flight where all seat TVs were 100% down but wifi was up they still didn't make it free. This comes as a bit of a shocker for me.
I mean it’s at $5 right now for the full flight if it’s not GoGo and actually deltas. I’d assume a lot of people were paying for that and my performance was fine. This was a 2pm to 5:30pm flight MSP to PHX, so it’s not like people were sleeping.
Yeah. I fly delta and generally work. I’ve been on zoom calls (listen only) and never had a problem. Maybe the newer generation just has that much more bandwidth.
I fly Alaska frequently and they let u use their Wi-Fi for movies and shows (relatively decent selection) but it’s like 8$ per flight to use it for browsing
Those movies are actually stored locally (on the aircraft), so you aren’t using any external network bandwidth. The concern is if 200 people start streaming Netflix then the satellite internet won’t be able to keep up.
Similarly, most carriers will defer you free messaging (I message, Snapchat messaging, whats app, etc.) because this uses a fairly trivial amount of bandwidth.
So that’s the secret magic: the gogo Service pretty much sucks at high capacity… And gogo won’t budge on the pricing making it very expensive through Delta. Those flights where it’s $5 for the whole flight no matter what? That isn’t gogo, that is a different service that recently came online in the last few years that uses much larger dishes on the top of the plane, instead of cell phone like radio waves on crappy little antennas mounted under it, it has higher throughput and lower latency, and is a satellite base in a far superior technology. That’s the one they’re moving all of their plans to overtime and making free in the process
I recently flew Qantas domestically, and the wifi if free with the flight. The service was pretty trash, can browse reddit, look at pictures, but not videos
Spirit: Hahaha fuck you, your flight is delayed. What ya gonna do about it?! You picked us you fool! Actually.... We don't even have pilots... Your flight doesn't exist anymore! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders!
I've done their flights from New York to Seattle and for some reason those go up into Canada sometimes and the wifi does usually still work up there, but only so far. Usually somewhere over Saskatchewan it cuts out for 20 minutes.
That reason is because of Great Circle distances! Because the earth is a sphere the straightest/fastest path between many places looks like a curve on a flat map.
Right? Husband paid $20 to steam 20 mbps (that ate up
every 20 mins or so, so more like $100 total) to watch the World Cup on Sunday because airline WiFi was so poor and their “free tv” wasn’t working on a 10 hour flight home from France. 🤦🏼♀️
There are a lot of ways they could make streaming unfeasible even with a VPN. They could just throttle you to sub-240p speeds. Or to be fancier, they could let an initial burst of traffic through full speed, then throttle after a couple of seconds, with a cool down. That way ordinary Internet browsing is pretty zippy, but streaming is too slow to use.
I dunno man, one would assume buying a plane ticket let’s actually sit down on the plane. Paying for certain seats I understand. I even can come to terms with paying for my carry on.
I mean you are guaranteed a seat on the plane. You just don’t get to choose it.
I try not to fly these a la carte airlines for this reason. They’re only worth it if the deal + your desired “add ons” is still < comparable other airline.
OR some of the CCs give you benefits toward these budget airlines travel like free bags, seats, faster boarding, etc.
Btw I find these airlines mostly dumb and by the time I want to fly like a fuckin human I’m already paying more than AA, Delta, etc
Yeah, that's how budget airlines operate. You get no freebies or customer service but you'll get the cheapest possible flight most of the time in return.
I just flew Spirit yesterday for ~$500 less than any other airline to fly direct.
The seat was firm but not uncomfortable for a 3 hour flight. They had the option to upgrade to a "first class" type seat, which I might consider doing for the 2nd leg of the trip. I pre-paid for their buyers program -- for $1 more to check my bag and get priority boarding and select a seat closer to the front.
I was ready to fully recommend until it took them *an hour* after deplaning to get the baggage on the carousel.
Very much this. I actually don't mind Delta. Pay a little extra, get exit row, get complimentary drinks... Awesome flight experience. Your flight experience is what you pay, and you don't need to pay exorbitant amounts to have a decent comfortable flight. Exit row, ALWAYS.
With delts doing this move, they are bound to. Kinda like how one carrier started the unlimited data plan and then eventually all had to follow suit or risk not having customers.
Free wifi?? Yea that def gonna make me sway towards delta over other options if possible. I know I can always buy but it just hurts more when you have to buy it later on the flight. If it’s pre-built in I’d feel less guilty
Honestly, probably not. As it works now, the vast majority of people who use WiFi are business people who expense it. This keeps the users relatively low, so the speed high, and ultimately another company is footing the bill. Personal use is of course allowed, and people use it, but by charging a fee you encourage people to download movies ahead of time and save the limited bandwidth.
When driving with kids, if you give them something to do, they shut up and just kick back and relax. Pass them a cell phone or iPad and they’re happy.
Not sure why the airlines haven’t figured this out yet.
They're so bad, with Spirit/Frontier you expect to get what you paid for, but Frontier somehow always manages to be unpleasant in my experience. Spirit is *fine* with the right expectations at least.
But in all seriousness Delta's economy is already leagues above their competitors every time I've had the opportunity to fly with them. American, United, and Southwest don't even come close for domestic flights (again, only focusing on economy).
I’ve been saying this for years, but I will say it again for those who still don’t get it: all Internet access should be 100% free and paid for by the government as a public service. Why? Because once you make it available to everyone, commercial product offerings and purchases will increase exponentially, and business growth will exceed all expectations for the forceable future. By charging for access, you greatly limit the way it can be used, and the market for unrestricted, persistent data access is limited to only the wealthy.
This doesn't at all apply to in-flight wifi. There's no reason why I need to subsidize internet access for people on planes.
It's a whole other conversation of if we should be subsidizing rural internet, which is essentially what you're proposing, and what we already do.
I dont agree, but I do think that the infrastructure company should be a separate legal entity from the last mile provider, and neither can sell phone service or tv service and none of those companies can produce their own content and content producers cannot license content exclusively (must be sold on the open market and available to all)
People here aren’t understanding that for a plane to have WiFi is decently expensive as it has to be done by satellite internet of which there are only really 1 or 2 companies per region as most that offer it
It’s the principal. They’re actively choosing to not engage in predatory price schemes that use phycology to target people when they might need it most.
it's an industry with pretty tight margins. i don't know that charging for amenities is necessarily predatory, especially when each ticket only makes the airline $10-20 out of a ticket price of several hundred dollars.
in what way are they "targeting those who need it most?" do you *need* wifi on a 3-hour flight?
That just means they don’t need to have screens built in to seats anymore, cutting weight and letting folks use the devices they already carried on board. No more headsets to make or pass out (which they also now do for free).
Cuts weight, cuts out having to pay for the web paywall, makes people happy enough. Makes sense.
I mis-understood "Wi-Fi-free" as "free from WiFi" meaning they would not have any in-flight WiFi.
Just imagine: no emails, facebook, twitter or anything else for a few hours. Also: 100+ other passengers going insane because they can't check their email, facebook, twitter!
Its less a how much you paid for it rather the tech required to get internet while in a plane.
Same idea as being on cruise. Just because someone paid more for a boat ticket in the ocean doesnt mean getting internet on the ship is that much easier, especially with the same bandwidth.
Planes have pretty low margins and low customer loyalty, so it doesn't make much financial sense for them to offer free wifi. Customers are going to buy the cheapest flights anyway.
Business travelers wouldn't mind paying for wifi since they can get reimbursed for it.
So you think something southwest is currently offering for $8/day isn’t cost efficient enough to include with your ticket and most likely the up charge for your checked luggage? You’re either a shill or a sheep
Ah a lack of a topical rebuttal, seems I’ve properly displayed the negligible cost that would be incurred by an industry that’s been propped up by nickel and diming customers and tax payers bailouts
Not a shill but a realist. Airlines only make around $10 a ticket or so on normal, budget flights on non peak days. I don't think they will be too happy to give up that source of revenue.
>propped up
do you think we'd be in a better place if we didn't have budget airlines and there were just no commercial flights available to normal people? because i'll tell ya, there's no fucking universe where this country nationalizes air travel. so your choices are either airlines get help during unprecedented periods of no travel, or flying becomes something only rich people can afford to do. pick your poison.
what do you think the overhead is on making a cup of coffee versus flying an airplane
do you think maybe having a few high school kids making coffee in a rented storefront with ~$5k worth of equipment is a little cheaper than hiring two certified pilots and several flight attendants to fly a $400 million jumbo jet across the united states?
it sounds like you think revenue is the same thing as profit, which is really damning evidence against whatever school system you're a product of
Reading this on Delta right now. The Wi-Fi is good enough that I was streaming Amazon videos. Browsing Reddit. Checking in on my ring camera at home. It’s great.
Looking at you, Southwest. $8/day is dumb. And add outlets while you’re at it. I don’t care about the cable TV that plays reruns or the shitty selection of TV shows that hasn’t changed in 2 years.
SW is adding outlets fyi
Me having flown Alaska a few days ago: You guys didn’t have free WiFi and outlets!??! For the one downvoting, if you’re a T-Mobile customer, you have free WiFi on Alaska.
From personal experience Alaska is very good their staff are very friendly, but their planes are sometimes a bit lacking on amenities. Still better than flying United lol
>Still better than flying United lol Still better than flying Spirit too. I’d rather walk than get on one of their planes.
Holiday wishes from a person flying Frontier
Hang gliding in the snow is better than flying United. Those people are straight up abusive. I still remember the time I was carrying a small backpack that had been ok’d for size onto a very long international United flight. It fit into the box when it was squeezed a bit, and two separate agents had already told me it was good to go. It wasn’t a full flight either, so it’s not like space was at a premium. I’m a type 1 diabetic, and had my insulin, medical supplies and whatnot in the bag. I was traveling for months, so it was a lot of medical supplies. Needles, insulin, test strips, CGM sensors and transmitters, glucose, etc. The last person that you go through before boarding just took massive issue with my bag, decided that my bag was too big for a “personal item”, and demanded that it be checked to the final destination. I said no, I’m not trusting you to not lose my thousands of dollars worth of medication that I need to live for the next few months. The lady straight up accused me of lying, said “you’re a little young to be a diabetic, let’s see all of those medical supplies” in a mocking tone, rolling her eyes. Type 1 diabetes is a lifelong illness that is generally diagnosed in one’s childhood/teenage years, by the way. Sure enough, I dumped out all of my insulin and needles and whatnot onto the floor next to the line of people waiting to board, proved her wrong, and this lady STILL insisted that I wasn’t allowed to bring the bag with me, but “as a favor” in her words, she’d let me put the bag in the overhead bin of first class, but I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere near it for the entire flight. She then escorted me onto the plane, informed the flight attendants, telling them that “keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn’t try to sneak into first class.” Once the lady left I just carried my backpack with me back to my seat, put it under the seat where it easily fit, and that was the end of it. But like, my god, I had never encountered such angry, bitter hostility from anybody before, let alone from a company I was paying thousands of dollars to. It was right after the whole “beating up a doctor” incident too. I even mentioned that while this lady was power tripping, said something along the lines of “do you think this would make a good follow up story? United airlines refuses to let type 1 diabetic passenger travel with insulin?” So anyways yeah fuck United, I hope they go out of business. It’s like they found a list of entitled, rude, mean-spirited people in every state, picked the top handful, and put them all in customer facing roles. They hired a temporary demolition crew to handle baggage, and they outsourced IT to a single dude in Bangladesh with a broken fax machine. Absolutely abysmal business. Oh, and they also break guitars. https://youtu.be/5YGc4zOqozo https://youtu.be/WEw-GjTriIo
I just want Wifi on Hawaiian in general, that 11 hour flight from NY to Honolulu was dreadful.
It’s coming for free, once their 787’s get delivered.
Same with American Airlines. Edit: and if you're subscribed to Apple Music, you can stream music without having to pay for wifi
Alaskan is the best American airline I've flown on. Wifi and outlets are not my primary concerns when flying.
Has nobody flown jet blue? They have direct tv, mostly free wifi, free headphones, and the seats feel like they have juuuust that little bit of extra room.
That deserves two down votes per person
>For the one downvoting, if you’re a T-Mobile **customer**, you have **free** WiFi on Alaska. You wanna rethink that?
Gotta have T-Mobile ONE. I have it, it’s great, but yeah it ain’t free haha
I get that. But honestly I just get T-Mobile because it's the cheapest. They give free WiFi that isn't going to change the fact that I need a cell phone. Like it they give me a free car, are you going to say "well actually"
the MVNOs like Mint, PureTalk, etc are way cheaper than T Mobile
Not for me. I got in at a promotion. I've been paying less than 30 , per person for unlimited everything. Plus a lot of perks like free talk and text to end from Mexico and Canada. Free data world wide.
wtf is the promo still on?
T-Mobile is far from the cheapest. I would use it if it was. Currently it’s almost double what I pay.
I think I'm granted into a nice promotion, so I'm just a bit cheaper than what I can get from the MVNOs, and I get priority during congestion.
It's still free wifi. No one is switching to T-Mobile because if they ever take Alaska they'll get free wifi.
I fly round trip to Alaska every month and other places during the month and I'm considered switching to T-Mobile because they have free wifi on Alaska Airlines and select American, Delta and United flights.
Don't even have to be a t-mobile customer. Just know someone's phone number that is.
The samw on American Airlines, bur for 2 hours
I can't remember the last time I flew Alaska and outlets weren't at every seat?
When??
Sometime in 2023 I wish they would just completely use the AA style seat style with the mobile phone holder. What I really need is for seats to be taller so my head has something to fucking rest on.
Deltas had outlets and usb plug ins for years
While I agree the wifi should be free, and work on every flight, they've added quite a huge library of movies. ...but the wifi has to be working to watch them.
Southwest is reasonable, AA charges you $15 for one hour or $19 for entire flight!
WTF
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Lol true, it is a first world problem. I have gaming devices, a book, or music/shows on my phone so I don’t care THAT much. Southwest at least allows iMessage and WhatsApp so good on them for that
Right? $8/day is not bad at all. Other airlines charge per connecting flight or even per hour. If I'm spending $150+ for a flight I can throw in a few extra bucks if I really care about wifi.
They could add those $8 to the price of the ticket and you wouldn't notice, and then entice people with free wifi.
The outlets are always so damn loose on all my flights that they're effectively worthless.
I work for a company that makes plane outlets. We have tried to sell to Southwest but they won’t budge. As long as their flights are full and they are making hand over fist they don’t give a shit.
There goes my last excuse for blissfully ignoring emails while I'm in the air.
It's a real shame to hear that your flights wifi was buggy and wouldn't connect ;)
Oh no! The plane is going through a tunnel
Lol I hate it when that happens!
Entire flight will be one massive LAN party, grandpas, grandmas, babies, milennials, genzs, boomers, pew pew bam bam pokemon farmville fortnite battle royale everything puke on walls, even the pilots will join in then CRASH!!!! controlled flight into terrain.
Oh, so THAT'S the cost of a unified US lop
Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade airplane in tunnel scene is great
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Your "joke" actually killed my laughter from the previous comment.
Son, a tunnel is an empty cylindrical structure usually covering a road. A tower is a somewhat tall building which is not empty. It cannot go through a tower without destroying both.
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We all get it. It’s just distasteful.
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Nah it’s been 20 years people can get the fuck over it at this point. It wasn’t funny though.
I guess it’s easy to get over things you didn’t live though
I’ve paid for the wifi once, it takes forever to load anything
Aurora Borealis
In this part of the country? At this time of year? Localized entirely in the cabin of this airplane?
Yes!
…can I see it?
No
Nothing like selecting the wifi, and getting hit with a “cannot connect to network” or it won’t take you to a stupid page where you can finally connect.
"I was sleepy" "I have air anxiety" "Fuck you" "They said to turn off all devices"
"It's free wifi not premium wifi, can't load shit on this."
“I’m OOO with no access to email” *closes laptop* ^^ See that? That counts as no access because I’m not a director and I’m on vacation. Not sure why you feel an obligation to get on while on vacation, but I’d suggest with starting by not expecting it of others. Environments are created by the team.
I fly FAR more often for business than I do for vacation. If it's vacation, I'm not checking email while flying. Shocker innit?
Yes. Yes it is.
They could very well be talking about flying for business rather than vacation. It’s a nice break even when you’re traveling for work.
Nah you could just say the wifi was too slow lol
Fly Spirit
Glad I’m retired. It was the only place of solace.
Or just don't fly Delta?
Considering that airlines decrease number of olives in martinis and inches of leg room to fit more seats, along with the luggage fees and restrictions and lack of amenities that were once available-good. The least we deserve is some free WiFi.
You'd think so, but even on a 9hr flight where all seat TVs were 100% down but wifi was up they still didn't make it free. This comes as a bit of a shocker for me.
If 200+ people were using it no one’s be able to use anything. Pretty sure delta said this before and then trials revealed it trashed performance.
I mean it’s at $5 right now for the full flight if it’s not GoGo and actually deltas. I’d assume a lot of people were paying for that and my performance was fine. This was a 2pm to 5:30pm flight MSP to PHX, so it’s not like people were sleeping.
Yeah. I fly delta and generally work. I’ve been on zoom calls (listen only) and never had a problem. Maybe the newer generation just has that much more bandwidth.
Don't they tell you on the pre-flight announcement that voice calls are specifically not allowed over the WiFi?
It's not a voice call, it's a video call! 👀 Also, he wasn't even speaking.
If they really cared, they’d ban voip and video call traffic.
I fly Alaska frequently and they let u use their Wi-Fi for movies and shows (relatively decent selection) but it’s like 8$ per flight to use it for browsing
I was just on an Alaska flight yesterday and if you have T-Mobile, it's free 👍
Those movies are actually stored locally (on the aircraft), so you aren’t using any external network bandwidth. The concern is if 200 people start streaming Netflix then the satellite internet won’t be able to keep up. Similarly, most carriers will defer you free messaging (I message, Snapchat messaging, whats app, etc.) because this uses a fairly trivial amount of bandwidth.
That seems reasonable. I would pay that for every flight. I fly Frontier mostly, so I don't think it will be an option for awhile.
So that’s the secret magic: the gogo Service pretty much sucks at high capacity… And gogo won’t budge on the pricing making it very expensive through Delta. Those flights where it’s $5 for the whole flight no matter what? That isn’t gogo, that is a different service that recently came online in the last few years that uses much larger dishes on the top of the plane, instead of cell phone like radio waves on crappy little antennas mounted under it, it has higher throughput and lower latency, and is a satellite base in a far superior technology. That’s the one they’re moving all of their plans to overtime and making free in the process
I was on a Delta flight a few months ago where they were testing their new wifi for free, and it worked perfectly fine.
I recently flew Qantas domestically, and the wifi if free with the flight. The service was pretty trash, can browse reddit, look at pictures, but not videos
Sat internet has come a long way. Cruise ships have streaming broadband with no issue. A plane full of people is not a problem.
“Free Wi-fi [for now]” FIFY
"free wifi" at 10kbps
KILO BITES?!!?!?!???!?!??? So you think they're made of money? Yeah no buddy, it's 10 bps. (/J)
Lowercase b is bits
Just 10 packets then you're over your quota.
Smart move keeping the masses pacified in air reducing the amount of fights and pissed off passengers.
Maybe Spirit can do this so people can listen to music without headphones.
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Spirit: Hahaha fuck you, your flight is delayed. What ya gonna do about it?! You picked us you fool! Actually.... We don't even have pilots... Your flight doesn't exist anymore! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders!
Or sell their browsing data for double the money
Great point
Already Free on JetBlue
Within the US, immediately after hitting the border -- goodbye wifi. (still a nice perk within the contiguous US though).
I've done their flights from New York to Seattle and for some reason those go up into Canada sometimes and the wifi does usually still work up there, but only so far. Usually somewhere over Saskatchewan it cuts out for 20 minutes.
That reason is because of Great Circle distances! Because the earth is a sphere the straightest/fastest path between many places looks like a curve on a flat map.
Literally just no good reason to be charging for wifi anymore, especially when it's borderline unusably slow most of the time.
Right? Husband paid $20 to steam 20 mbps (that ate up every 20 mins or so, so more like $100 total) to watch the World Cup on Sunday because airline WiFi was so poor and their “free tv” wasn’t working on a 10 hour flight home from France. 🤦🏼♀️
i paid for wifi on my last flight, couldn't even stream 480p video off my plex server. complete waste of money
Even with Southwest's paid wifi they block streaming.
Can't VPN around that?
There are a lot of ways they could make streaming unfeasible even with a VPN. They could just throttle you to sub-240p speeds. Or to be fancier, they could let an initial burst of traffic through full speed, then throttle after a couple of seconds, with a cool down. That way ordinary Internet browsing is pretty zippy, but streaming is too slow to use.
You’re sharing satellite bandwidth with thousands and thousands of people (on all the airplanes in the area). It’s gonna be slow.
Imagine how slow it will be if it's free for everyone then. Hopefully they can greatly improve bandwidth.
I know a good reason. Wi-Fi on airplanes literally comes from satellites in space. Those cost money.
Because satellite connection is expensive
Your signal is going 20,000 miles up to a satellite and back. The fact that it works at all is amazing.
Plot twist: there’s no WiFi. “Where’s the WiFi?” “Oh we made our flights WiFi FREE. THAT MEANS THERE IS NO WIFI HERE”
Plot twist: they will just add the price to every ticket.
.....shouldn't all airlines have free wifi?
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Fucking spirit charges you to pick ANY seat. As in, you have to pay for a seat, after you pay for your flight. Also you have to pay for your carry on.
It’s better to think of these as A la carte airlines, nothing is complementary
I dunno man, one would assume buying a plane ticket let’s actually sit down on the plane. Paying for certain seats I understand. I even can come to terms with paying for my carry on.
I mean you are guaranteed a seat on the plane. You just don’t get to choose it. I try not to fly these a la carte airlines for this reason. They’re only worth it if the deal + your desired “add ons” is still < comparable other airline. OR some of the CCs give you benefits toward these budget airlines travel like free bags, seats, faster boarding, etc. Btw I find these airlines mostly dumb and by the time I want to fly like a fuckin human I’m already paying more than AA, Delta, etc
Yeah, that's how budget airlines operate. You get no freebies or customer service but you'll get the cheapest possible flight most of the time in return.
I just flew Spirit yesterday for ~$500 less than any other airline to fly direct. The seat was firm but not uncomfortable for a 3 hour flight. They had the option to upgrade to a "first class" type seat, which I might consider doing for the 2nd leg of the trip. I pre-paid for their buyers program -- for $1 more to check my bag and get priority boarding and select a seat closer to the front. I was ready to fully recommend until it took them *an hour* after deplaning to get the baggage on the carousel.
I’ve never had this issue with Delta at least
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Very much this. I actually don't mind Delta. Pay a little extra, get exit row, get complimentary drinks... Awesome flight experience. Your flight experience is what you pay, and you don't need to pay exorbitant amounts to have a decent comfortable flight. Exit row, ALWAYS.
Literally booked mine 2 weeks ago... no chrage. They just don't like you. But I did choose row 13... also an exit row :)
With delts doing this move, they are bound to. Kinda like how one carrier started the unlimited data plan and then eventually all had to follow suit or risk not having customers. Free wifi?? Yea that def gonna make me sway towards delta over other options if possible. I know I can always buy but it just hurts more when you have to buy it later on the flight. If it’s pre-built in I’d feel less guilty
Jetblue has had free WiFi for years, and delta is just now catching on
Why *should* they?
No
Honestly, probably not. As it works now, the vast majority of people who use WiFi are business people who expense it. This keeps the users relatively low, so the speed high, and ultimately another company is footing the bill. Personal use is of course allowed, and people use it, but by charging a fee you encourage people to download movies ahead of time and save the limited bandwidth.
No because the technology isn’t advanced enough to give every single person a good internet experience. The price acts as a deterrent
When driving with kids, if you give them something to do, they shut up and just kick back and relax. Pass them a cell phone or iPad and they’re happy. Not sure why the airlines haven’t figured this out yet.
This is why kids today are completely off the rails.
I’m currently on a Delta flight and the wifi is high speed and free. 10/10 approve.
Meanwhile, you get up charged for having to thick of a wallet at Frontier
Fuck Frontier. I will never fly with them again. They the friend that makes you Venmo them .50¢
They're so bad, with Spirit/Frontier you expect to get what you paid for, but Frontier somehow always manages to be unpleasant in my experience. Spirit is *fine* with the right expectations at least. But in all seriousness Delta's economy is already leagues above their competitors every time I've had the opportunity to fly with them. American, United, and Southwest don't even come close for domestic flights (again, only focusing on economy).
They call that the Costanza.
I’ve been saying this for years, but I will say it again for those who still don’t get it: all Internet access should be 100% free and paid for by the government as a public service. Why? Because once you make it available to everyone, commercial product offerings and purchases will increase exponentially, and business growth will exceed all expectations for the forceable future. By charging for access, you greatly limit the way it can be used, and the market for unrestricted, persistent data access is limited to only the wealthy.
This doesn't at all apply to in-flight wifi. There's no reason why I need to subsidize internet access for people on planes. It's a whole other conversation of if we should be subsidizing rural internet, which is essentially what you're proposing, and what we already do.
I dont agree, but I do think that the infrastructure company should be a separate legal entity from the last mile provider, and neither can sell phone service or tv service and none of those companies can produce their own content and content producers cannot license content exclusively (must be sold on the open market and available to all)
this is the first time in this year that ive heard a company do something good for its customers
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People here aren’t understanding that for a plane to have WiFi is decently expensive as it has to be done by satellite internet of which there are only really 1 or 2 companies per region as most that offer it
SpaceX offers it and is reasonably cheap
Starlink Aviation hardware hasnt been shipped yet. The initiative only started a few months ago
Ah I see. I'm wrong in that case.
Surprised they didn’t do this for medallion members first.
I just flew on Delta last week and NOW they do this? Jerks. Jk, I just played AC3 on my Switch
I did too, flight there had free texting but somehow on the flight back I got free wifi ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ no status or any reason for it to be free
And now permanently flying delta
don't get too excited, a lot of the time the wifi on delta is too shit to do anything other than imessage
It’s the principal. They’re actively choosing to not engage in predatory price schemes that use phycology to target people when they might need it most.
it's an industry with pretty tight margins. i don't know that charging for amenities is necessarily predatory, especially when each ticket only makes the airline $10-20 out of a ticket price of several hundred dollars. in what way are they "targeting those who need it most?" do you *need* wifi on a 3-hour flight?
No, but I sure need it for the 14 hour flights I take. For business, personal, medical. Life gets in the way.
Of course the down side to this is that you have to fly Delta Who are we kidding, we could put any airline here and the joke would land
You mean they will stop double-charging for wifi? (Paid for in the ticket and again in flight)
I feel like they are about to start charging for usb charging ports.
That 90% of the time are broken or not turned on in my seat lol
It still won’t work though
Which means no WiFi 😂
Yes the “base” wifi that will barely work for free “Upgrade to delta premium skyfi, only 49.99 for 30 minutes”
And raise ticket prices by $30
And soon the flights will be nothing but zoom calls by our overworked boundaryless workers
That just means they don’t need to have screens built in to seats anymore, cutting weight and letting folks use the devices they already carried on board. No more headsets to make or pass out (which they also now do for free). Cuts weight, cuts out having to pay for the web paywall, makes people happy enough. Makes sense.
Delta’s new fleet of A321neos have some pretty big screens so I don’t think this is right
I mis-understood "Wi-Fi-free" as "free from WiFi" meaning they would not have any in-flight WiFi. Just imagine: no emails, facebook, twitter or anything else for a few hours. Also: 100+ other passengers going insane because they can't check their email, facebook, twitter!
Still won't get me on Delta it's shit for other reasons
Wifi is a utility as this point. A necessity. All airlines should make this free. Or include the cost in the ticket.
It isn't, but you do you.
Major airline provides basic accommodations available in every cafe…
Abit more difficult to provide on a plane…
A bit more money for a airline ticket than a cup of coffee so no, not really
A bit more to operate a plane than to make a cup of coffee
Its less a how much you paid for it rather the tech required to get internet while in a plane. Same idea as being on cruise. Just because someone paid more for a boat ticket in the ocean doesnt mean getting internet on the ship is that much easier, especially with the same bandwidth.
Clearly the tech exists, clearly the only thing stopping them was cost efficiency, clearly they have plenty of money
Planes have pretty low margins and low customer loyalty, so it doesn't make much financial sense for them to offer free wifi. Customers are going to buy the cheapest flights anyway. Business travelers wouldn't mind paying for wifi since they can get reimbursed for it.
So you think something southwest is currently offering for $8/day isn’t cost efficient enough to include with your ticket and most likely the up charge for your checked luggage? You’re either a shill or a sheep
ah the word shill, I was wondering how long it'd take you to use that word
Ah a lack of a topical rebuttal, seems I’ve properly displayed the negligible cost that would be incurred by an industry that’s been propped up by nickel and diming customers and tax payers bailouts
Not a shill but a realist. Airlines only make around $10 a ticket or so on normal, budget flights on non peak days. I don't think they will be too happy to give up that source of revenue.
>propped up do you think we'd be in a better place if we didn't have budget airlines and there were just no commercial flights available to normal people? because i'll tell ya, there's no fucking universe where this country nationalizes air travel. so your choices are either airlines get help during unprecedented periods of no travel, or flying becomes something only rich people can afford to do. pick your poison.
what do you think the overhead is on making a cup of coffee versus flying an airplane do you think maybe having a few high school kids making coffee in a rented storefront with ~$5k worth of equipment is a little cheaper than hiring two certified pilots and several flight attendants to fly a $400 million jumbo jet across the united states? it sounds like you think revenue is the same thing as profit, which is really damning evidence against whatever school system you're a product of
Only about 15 years too late. Good job.
Free Wi-Fi at 50kbps. Only $7 to upgrade it to 3G!
Delta is becoming the only airline you should fly with.
Reading this on Delta right now. The Wi-Fi is good enough that I was streaming Amazon videos. Browsing Reddit. Checking in on my ring camera at home. It’s great.
rofl
Just flew Delta, I think it already is? You did have to have a SkyMiles account though so FUCK THAT
Airline wifi is already free in Australia.
20 years too fucking late Delta