Originally Posted by fisherman

Bad news - two of my flights this week had a text message / challenge code requirement for free full-flight access. I have a feeling that they are testing and will roll this out widely soon.

The terrible thing is it requires you to hop on wifi, enable wifi calling under cellular, and then hope that connection establishes so you can receive a text message. Took my phone a while and multiple "resend code" attempts before a code came through. A real downgrade to the experience given the flakiness of United wifi.