SingaporeJoe

Technically, not different at all but wearing my beloved tin foil hat, I can imagine two scenarios that are different from a corner cafe Internet access:

1) If someone gets hacked, it may be difficult to establish which jurisdiction applies and whether, say, the airline needs to provide system logs and such for the forensics - and whether those logs are in such form that they can be admitted as evidence in that jurisdiction.

1') A variant of this is the question of privacy, intellectual property rights and such if you access online content.

2) If the likes of TSA (or their non-American counterparts who like to argue that they have a right to exercise certain powers to ensure airline safety) decide that they need to have access to the content of the communication, will you be required to release the cryptographic keys you have used in securing the air to ground communication either as a requirement to enter the destination country or as a requirement from any countries whose air space you have been to during the flight?

The "smoking anywhere in the plane is an offence" signs usually say that if you smoke, you will be subject to the laws of the home country of the airline. But for example when you fly to the USA there are all these announcements that you are supposed to sit stiff at your seat and not have ad hoc meetings at the corridors. So, which set of rules applies to the air to ground communication?

These are quite important issues if you intend to use the plane WiFi access to operate on work related matters and those matters involve any sensitive data that you have a contractual or legal duty to safeguard. This is quite a different ball game from just social networking and browsing the net while flying.