corporate-wage-slave

There is no connectivity on any BA service at the moment, I think we are still several months off before it will be enabled and there will be a lot of publicity when it has happened, doubtless in this forum too.

The exception is a limited form of connectivity (not WIFI) on LCY-JFK services.

john205

Is that being upgraded to the new system as well?

john

Schind

There is now connectivity on a few planes. People on Twitter are mentioning it while they're flying. It looks like they're only finding it by accident as it's not being announced by the crews onboard. I assume they're not paying for it yet.
So far the only planes I've seen mentioned with working wifi are the 747's in the CIV series (I've seen CIVC/R/S/V and Y mentioned).
My guess is that this is all part of the testing process - let people find it by accident, check everything's working then make a big announcement at some point in the future.

Pascoe

BA 116 looks to be G-CIVI tonight - I will report back if it's available there.

scillyisles

The installation and enabling of wifi is months behind schedule. I would not hold your breath for the "announcement".

Pascoe

I am not at all bothered about this development btw - they can take as long as they like.

I am truly dreading the prospect of some loud, self important J pax doing a skype call as I try and relax.

Additionally I assume that on any given flight there will be at least one idiot who will attempt to stream hi def movies or something equally crazy, thus hogging the bandwidth (unless there are tools to guard against this).

So I certainly won't be relying on this capability even if it is rolled out.

This is not in any way a dig at BA btw - it's a comment on the human propensity to spoil stuff.

Pre-rant over. aaaaaand..... relax. ;-)

BingBongBoy

I believe VOIP services will be blocked, so won't be able to make Skype, WhatsApp, Messenger or FaceTime Audio calls.

If I am completely honest, it really does nothing for me at all either. My jet now does not have wifi because the principal said it is his only time he is away from phone calls, emails, messages etc. and he can relax, have something to eat without being interrupted, have a proper sleep on long sectors and enjoy a movie or some reading etc. And that is how I feel when I get on a plane too. Not that I am as popular as the boss

Tobias-UK

I hope you're right, I've been on a couple of flights where a passenger has decided to shout down the phone mid flight.

This ^

Pascoe

Good to hear. I feel better now. Was way more bothered abt the phone call thing than the potential data hogging.

BingBongBoy

I could be wrong, but I remember reading the information about it when it first was announced and I still worked for BA, and remember reading that, but that could have changed since then!

corporate-wage-slave

I must have done several hundred FT posts from inflight wifi on various airlines (and even a few from BA1, though that was painful). So that's on Iberia, Qatar, AA, Norwegian, Cathay, LATAM, Singapore, Turkish and Lufthansa in the last year - it certainly isn't anything new now. It can make a long flight go past very quickly, and I can't really point to anything bad in terms other passenger's behaviour, in terms of what I have seen so far. In some ways it is self regulating. For example AA's system is often too slow to support voice calls, particularly on longer flights, as a result of GoGo's aggressive marketing to different segments of the market. Whereas AA's network speed is quite reasonable on paper, it does get overloaded, and even Flyertalk gets a bit tedious in terms of screen refreshes, but too slow for anything too adventurous or anti social.

Pascoe

Cool - so ok for text emails etc only. Works for me.

Dave_C

Virgin Atlantic are proudly advertising the fact (on TV) that their entire fleet is now wifi equipped.

rockflyertalk

This.

TabTraveller

Well that may be true but it was painfully slow on my TATL today. And at Ł15 per 150mb it is really only good for basic emails and instant messaging. It took a few minutes to upload a small photo over whatsapp.