Originally Posted by
Noelle Sanglier
Hi all,
Does anyone know if the wifi on board of overseas Air France/KLM flights can be used to make zoom/teams/skype calls? I know it can be used for surfing, emailing and sending whatsapp message, but I have never tried to make a call.
Thanks!
Welcome to FT.
Can't speak to AF/KL in particular, but earlier this month I was again on a common carrier transatlantic flight using in-flight internet (hooked up via Inmarsat relays). I was able to receive various kinds of video calls as a result of VPNing in-flight but not without playing around with a VPN or some other stuff (altering ports perhaps) in advance of the calls. It was not a good enough connection to have an uninterrupted two-way video communication for anything meaningful -- i.e., not even a two minute presentation from my side. It was a bit better with audio-only exchanges, but it's spotty enough that I wouldn't count on it for submitting verbal instructions for final edits on any kind of important documents since it's too easy to miss a word here or there even if the video and/or audio seemed like it was ok on my end.
I've been on flights where my in-flight internet communications would not be disturbing to any passengers, so I have been trying this again and again in basically empty cabins or other non-disruptive ways. [Can't believe I've been playing around with in-flight internet video and audio calls for what seems to be around 16 years! I even learned to take a noise-cancelling mic headset for the calls on my laptop back at the beginning but soon realized not to expect any sustained conversations to work reliably over in-flight internet. Naughty me since already at the beginning of this on airlines they said they didn't want us using Skype and MSN messenger calls in-flight.
]
Update: Air France also has some of its planes using Inmarsat for in-flight internet, so what I reported above should also work just about the same way on at least some of the Air France Airbus 350 type planes. If you have a VPN connection operating you should be able to get video and/or audio calls to connect on at least those AF planes. Just don't expect much of a sustainable conversation to be had via Skype/Zoom/Teams/Meet/WebEx/FaceTime/WhatsApp/Signal in-flight. The connections are choppy, there are satellite dead spots, and sometimes it seems like the airline even forgets to turn on the internet connection for part of the flight at cruising altitude even as the Wifi network is on and may be connected to your device.