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United Launches Satellite-Based Wi-Fi Service

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Old May 22, 2013, 7:52 am
FlyerTalk Forums Expert How-Tos and Guides
Last edit by: gengar
Wifi Completion Status (Last Updated: 1/16/2015)
United Wi-Fi installation

Mainland USA
  • B737 - 187/253 Complete (74%)
  • B757 - 26/133 Complete (20%)

Worldwide Coverage
  • A319 - 55/55 Complete (100%)
  • A320 - 97/97 Complete (100%)
  • B747 - 24/24 Complete (100%)
  • B767 - 2/51 Complete (4%)
  • B777 - 42/74 Complete (57%)
  • B787 - 3/14 Complete (21%)

Worldwide Coverage Area
Satellite coverage may experience outages for reasons such as government regulations, weather and switching between satellite regions.

Gogo (PS Flights) Coverage Area


Pricing Data Points
City Pair / ~ Duration / Standard Cost / Premium Cost / Comments on Quality
747-400 (Panasonic):
  • SFO-FRA / 10 hrs / ?? / $22.99 / (5/2013) Peak speed was 6.5Mbps down, 2Mbps up. 700ms latency. awesome. (unavaca)
  • HNL-NRT / 8 hrs / $14.99 / $22.99 / The service worked all the way across the pacific, I was surprised at how reliable it was. The speediest I did topped out at .26mb, hardly "premium", but if you're ok with general web browsing and chatting with iMessage, it worked like a champ.
  • LAX-SYD / 14 hrs / $16.99 / No premium options. (Col Ronson) 3Mbps download speed test, worked for 95% of flight
  • SFO-HKG / 15 hrs / $16.99 / No premium option / (1/2014) (unavaca) speedtest immediately after wi-fi was available gave 700ms, 7Mbit down, 0.5Mbit up
  • BKK-NRT / 5 hr / $16.99 / No premium option / (SS255)
  • PEK-SFO / 11 hr / $16.99 / No premium option / Net access kept going down over the Pacific / Ookla speedtest 3.09 Mbps down, 0.23 Mbps up, 894ms RTT.

A319/A320 (Panasonic):
  • EWR-SFO / 6 hrs / $12.99 / $19.99 (IIRC)
  • EWR-SFO / 6 hrs / $14.99 / no premium option (3/2014) (greg99) speedtest 2498kbps d/l and an awesome 95kbps u/l (not a typo) 578ms latency
  • SFO-PHL / ~5.5 hrs / $14.99 / no premium option (4/2014) (qisu) didn't do speed test. good part of the flight had slow speed or no connection at all.
  • PHL-SFO / 6 hrs / $12.99 / no premium option (4/2014) (qisu) speedtest 2-3megabits down.
  • PHL-IAH / 4 hrs / $9.99 / $12.99 (IIRC, standard may have been $7.99?)
  • PHL-IAH / 3 hrs / $6.99 / no premium option [10/2013]
  • ORD-LAS / 3.5 hrs / $7.99 / No premium option. (lenscap)
  • ORD-SEA / 4 hrs / $9.99 / No premium option. (qisu)
  • ORD-LAX / 4 hrs / $8.99 / No premium option / speedtest peak 3mbps, average 600kbps to 1.5mbps
  • ORD-YVR / 4 hrs / $8.99 / No premium option / speedtest 3.86 Mbps to 10.70 Mbps down / 0.18 to 0.37 Mbps up - very reliable throughout the flight
  • IAD-LAX / 5 hrs / $12.99 / No premium option / speedtest peak 1.5mbps, average 400kbps to 800kbps, worked for 80% of flight but pretty spotty at times, but at least FA announced signal was poor
  • IAD-SEA / 5 hrs / $12.99 / No premium option / A319
  • SFO-LAX / 1 hr / $3.99 / No premium option / A319 (greg99)
  • SFO-ORD / 4 hr / $9.99 / No premium option / A320 / Pretty reliable, up most of the flight
  • IAH-SEA / 4.5 hrs / $8.99 / no premium option A320 (6/2014) (qisu) speedtest 5megabits down, 0.2 megabits up.

City Pair / ~ Duration / Standard or Limited Access Cost / Premium or Full Access Cost / Comments on Quality
737s (Thales LiveTV): [prices are per-hour]
  • IAH-TPA / ?? / $1 / $2 / (2/2014) (ssullivan) 23-25Mbps downstream (Premium/full access service). No service over Gulf of Mexico.
  • MIA-EWR / 2 hr / $1 / $2 / (3/2014) (hirohito888) 16Mbps down, 1Mbps up [not sure if this is for the regular or full access]
  • PDX-IAH / 4 hr / $1 / $2 / (4/2014) (qisu) regular was very slow, speed test about 100kilobits down.
  • SEA-IAH / 4 hr / $1 / $2 / (5/2014) (edcho) full access was speedy. 22 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up. Ping was 700ms.
  • SEA-IAH / 4 hr / $1 / $2 / (6/2014) (qisu) full access, 5-15 Mbps down, 0.2 Mbps up.
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United Launches Satellite-Based Wi-Fi Service

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Old Nov 21, 2014, 9:31 am
  #526  
 
Join Date: May 2005
Programs: Million Miler, 1K - Basically spend a lot of time on planes
Posts: 2,202
Originally Posted by iluv2fly
35%
For the 777 fleet that actually flies EWR-HKG, 12 of the 22 are complete and most likely 13-14 of them by the time you fly, so the chances are better than 35%.
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Old Nov 21, 2014, 9:42 am
  #527  
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Originally Posted by CO_Nonrev_elite
For the 777 fleet that actually flies EWR-HKG, 12 of the 22 are complete and most likely 13-14 of them by the time you fly, so the chances are better than 35%.
Just because they're "complete", doesn't mean it will work
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Old Nov 21, 2014, 9:52 am
  #528  
 
Join Date: May 2005
Programs: Million Miler, 1K - Basically spend a lot of time on planes
Posts: 2,202
Originally Posted by UA-NYC
Just because they're "complete", doesn't mean it will work
I've found the wifi to work fine of late. I can't remember the last time I had a flight where it wasn't working fine.
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Old Nov 21, 2014, 9:58 am
  #529  
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Originally Posted by iluv2fly
35%
He asked specifically for odds, so I'd say 1:2.
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Old Nov 21, 2014, 12:10 pm
  #530  
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: YVR
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Hoping to try the wifi from ORD-GRU or GRU-IAH in Mar, I'm sure they'll have some more aircrafts done by then but for today neither one seems to according to their page.

Does anyone know if the price differs between E, E+, Biz, First?

I would HOPE that an F ticket would get "free" wifi, but I can't seem to find that anywhere.
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Old Nov 21, 2014, 12:30 pm
  #531  
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Originally Posted by drvannostren
Hoping to try the wifi from ORD-GRU or GRU-IAH in Mar, I'm sure they'll have some more aircrafts done by then but for today neither one seems to according to their page.

Does anyone know if the price differs between E, E+, Biz, First?

I would HOPE that an F ticket would get "free" wifi, but I can't seem to find that anywhere.
You could buy a $10,000 Global First Ticket and you would still have to pay for wifi. UA gives nothing away it doesn't have to.
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Old Nov 21, 2014, 12:32 pm
  #532  
 
Join Date: Oct 2012
Location: ORD/IND
Programs: UA Platinum, Avis Preferred, Hertz PC, Hyatt Discoverist , Marriott Titanium
Posts: 742
Originally Posted by drvannostren
Hoping to try the wifi from ORD-GRU or GRU-IAH in Mar, I'm sure they'll have some more aircrafts done by then but for today neither one seems to according to their page.

Does anyone know if the price differs between E, E+, Biz, First?

I would HOPE that an F ticket would get "free" wifi, but I can't seem to find that anywhere.
In my experience the price doesn't differ between classes. Even in F you still have to pay full price.

I imagine over time, after the cost of the initial capital investment is accounted for, certain customers will get wifi for free. Don't expect it any time soon though.
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Old Nov 21, 2014, 3:25 pm
  #533  
 
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: BOS<>NYC<>BKK
Programs: UA 4.3MM LT-GS; AA1MM; Amtrak SE; MAR LT TITAN; PC Plat; HIL DIA; HYA GLOB
Posts: 4,392
Originally Posted by CO_Nonrev_elite
I've found the wifi to work fine of late. I can't remember the last time I had a flight where it wasn't working fine.
Last week, a sUA 777 TPE-SFO and a sCO 753 SFO-BOS, both WiFi equipped, but neither worked.

On the 777, the green fan was lit on unitedwifi.com, but after ten minutes, we lost Internet connectivity. The system was up long enough to take my $16.99 (I have already received the refund). The crew tried three resets, to no avail.

On the 753, the crew couldn't even get the system to boot up.
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Old Nov 22, 2014, 1:37 pm
  #534  
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: YVR
Programs: OZ Diamond, Jiffypark Manhattan Gold
Posts: 4,485
Originally Posted by Baze
You could buy a $10,000 Global First Ticket and you would still have to pay for wifi. UA gives nothing away it doesn't have to.
Haha that's cold UA! For the Elites I don't necessarily think it should be free though I think for F it should be, but I think it would make perfect sense to sell a yearly/monthly pass, not sure exactly how they'd do it if the intl and dom systems are diff but you could do domestic at least. Just for ease of use.

I'm on a UA F reward ticket so I guess I'll just be hopeful they have it and I'll decide if I feel like ponying up!
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Old Nov 30, 2014, 11:06 pm
  #535  
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11/26 IAH-NRT WIFI was available but could only access United.com.
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Old Dec 1, 2014, 7:22 am
  #536  
 
Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: CLE
Programs: UA Platinum, Starbucks Gold, PF Chang's Warrior, Wine Century 100
Posts: 1,105
Tried it last week on a 737-800 CLE-RSW. Bought the $1/hr. mobile package. Speed was very slow, around 200 kbps, with 900ms latency. A guy across the aisle from me appeared to be making a Skype call with it, so it seemed to work well enough for him.
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Old Dec 1, 2014, 8:11 am
  #537  
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Currently on UA78 NRT-EWR. WIFI is acceptable for basic web and email.
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Old Jan 14, 2015, 10:29 am
  #538  
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Dumb billing issue
So I use my legacy United Plat Visa (2x on all UA purchases) to purchase Wifi on a United plane...and the charge shows up as "Inflight Wi-Fi - LTV", no United reference anywhere, and Chase thus doesn't recognize it as a United purchase.

(smacks forehead)
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Old Jan 14, 2015, 12:09 pm
  #539  
 
Join Date: Dec 1999
Location: NorCal - 1K 2MM
Posts: 2,089
Originally Posted by UA-NYC
So I use my legacy United Plat Visa (2x on all UA purchases) to purchase Wifi on a United plane...and the charge shows up as "Inflight Wi-Fi - LTV", no United reference anywhere, and Chase thus doesn't recognize it as a United purchase.

(smacks forehead)
So at a charge of $2/hr, instead of getting 4 total UA miles you get 2? And this is a problem?
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Old Jan 14, 2015, 12:20 pm
  #540  
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Posts: 21,168
Originally Posted by Starman
So at a charge of $2/hr, instead of getting 4 total UA miles you get 2? And this is a problem?
$16 actually, for 4 hours of full browsing

I just find it amusing - am I going to fall on my sword for it? No. But it is mis-coded.
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