Travel Technology - anyone ever succesfully used Skype inflight?

anyone ever succesfully used Skype inflight?

thansk!

Was wondering the same thing...

I know several people who have done so. I haven't yet attempted.

I know several people who have done so. I haven't yet attempted.

I have, China Airlines 747 from SFO to TPE, upper deck. No power outlet, so my conversation and web surfing was cut short.

Yes....and thats hard to admit as someone who is kind of anti-skype...
I really hate how 'closed' sykep is...but thats another thread.

on the way home from Denmark to The States I made several VoIP calls. I tested 1 skype call and made about 10 SIP/IAX2 calls through my Asterisk servier...there was some latency with both but all in all the call quality was comparable.

Speaking of quality, minus the latency it was better than cell service...and I was using a BT headset (ok...so not exactly FAA approved). I was is FC on a Scandavian flight and it was virtually empy, but still I hate to imagine the day when domestic FC is full of people with WiFi VoIP phones talking from takeoff to touch down.

anyone ever succesfully used Skype inflight?

Used Skype on several SK flights. Works great (that is when SK has the internet working which was a 50% rate over 4 flights the past week). When I was finished my calls, I put my footrest up and watched my slingbox for awhile before going to sleep.

Tested it out with my BT headset (hey, it's transmitting on the same 2.4GHz band as the 802.11 I was using to get on Connexion!) on KE LAX-ICN a few weeks ago. Only used it briefly to not be bothersome, but call quality was excellent, with the expected latency.

But apparently you're only cool these days if you're Skyping someone who's on a different plane. :)

Yup no problem, but I find that my bluetooth headset just doesn't do the best job of canceling out all the other background noise.

Now if I had some fancy fancy headset with a tiny boom mic with active noise suppression, I suppose I could care on a quiet conversation and only semi annoy my seatmates.

Oh and iChat video works great too :)

Yup I have done it is as well, INCLUDING AN INFLIGHT WEB CAM CONFERENCE CALL! :D

I called an impromteu meeting of my group, to show them what was for dinner at 35K feet :) Plus I just wanted to test out the technology. It worked well on the Boeing Connexion linkup.

Oh god, please no! :td:

Is it really worth making your flight-neighbours' journeys hell just so you can have a natter? Isn't it a tad selfish? You'd be miffed if your neighbour watched movies or listened to his music without headphones on, so what's the difference?

Is it really so important for you to make that call that now rather than a)wait until you land, or b) email/text-chat?

I will be first in line demanding airlines segregate the chattering-classes to, well, a class of their own...

I used it on a LAX-ICN flight as well back in January. Seemed a decent quality overall. Just know that there are some big dead spots in the internet coverage, so don't sign up for the Flyertalk poker tourney, unless it's the first few hours of the flight. :)

I used it on a LAX-ICN flight as well back in January. Seemed a decent quality overall. Just know that there are some big dead spots in the internet coverage, so don't sign up for the Flyertalk poker tourney, unless it's the first few hours of the flight. :)

I was online almost the entire flight and there was only one dead spot: a 2 hour region over northeast Russia which was marked on the coverage map (and the map of the dead zone was quite accurate, as service went out and back in right where it should have from watching the moving map of the plane.)

I emailed Connexion and asked for a partial credit since their policy seems to state that. For some reason they said their records showed my usage fit into the $9.95 plan (which it most certainly didn't; I even downloaded around 1.5GB of stuff from a machine back home on that flight!) and gave me a $17 credit on my $26.95 rather than the few dollars I was expecting. So I'm not really going to complain about coverage on that flight. :)

There were also three 2 - 4 minute expected dead spots which I was going to explain below, but decided to stick it in another thread (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?p=5906621) since it was getting way off-topic as far as Skype usage goes.

Oh god, please no! :td:

Is it really worth making your flight-neighbours' journeys hell just so you can have a natter? Isn't it a tad selfish? You'd be miffed if your neighbour watched movies or listened to his music without headphones on, so what's the difference?

Is it really so important for you to make that call that now rather than a)wait until you land, or b) email/text-chat?

I will be first in line demanding airlines segregate the chattering-classes to, well, a class of their own...

Using skype to communicate is ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENT than using the builtin airphones that are pretty much on every airplane. The only difference with Skype is that it is free and/or relativly cheap to use.

What is the difference in me chatting on either an airphone or skype using my headset as compared to a normal conversation with my seat mate beside me? My voice/volume is no different when I talk on a phone or skype???

Using skype to communicate is ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENT than using the builtin airphones that are pretty much on every airplane. The only difference with Skype is that it is free and/or relativly cheap to use.
Uh yes, that's the whole point. No-one uses the skyphones because they're mind-bogglingly expensive. Hence no irritating "Can you hear me, I'm on the plane".

used skype on multiple LH and SQ flights, with video and voice... works perfect! ^

I used it ORD-MUC. I called family and friends about 1/2 into the flight. Worked very well! There was though a 2sec delay, but voice was fine on both ends. I got a pair of noise cancelling mic/headphones, and they didnt hear the engines in the background.

I used it ORD-MUC. I called family and friends about 1/2 into the flight. Worked very well! There was though a 2sec delay, but voice was fine on both ends. I got a pair of noise cancelling mic/headphones, and they didnt hear the engines in the background.

Which pair of noise cancelling mic/headphones did you get? I'm looking for suggestions on this.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1356029&CatId=390

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1356029&CatId=390

Thanks a lot.

What is the difference in me chatting on either an airphone or skype using my headset as compared to a normal conversation with my seat mate beside me? My voice/volume is no different when I talk on a phone or skype???

The severely high cost of the airphones makes their use limited. Skyping over Connexion, you've got pretty much unlimited use there, or super-cheap with SkypeOut to regular phone numbers even. So some people will be chatting away all flight...

And people will be talking louder using VOIP or using a cellphone on a plane (that's going to be a pain whenever that starts up :(.) For some reason, it's human nature to talk loudly on a phone. Then you start clipping, the other person can't hear you, and you talk even louder! (Well maybe you don't, but the average person does.) I constantly have to tell my mom that she doesn't need to shout into her cellphone to talk to me. :) This is made even worse by increased latency as with VOIP over a satellite connection, or cell service over satellite, as the feedback is delayed. When you're talking to a seatmate, you end up talking softer and at a level that your seatmate can hear but isn't louder than it needs to be, since you have that person right there.