Currently on NZ29 ex Houston - went to connect to WiFi and received a nice surprise - I got a Christmas WIFI special FREE for whole flight. On NZ28 on 28Dec I noticed a two hour gap in coverage and I note that today’s signup page states that if there are any dips in service they should be short-lived and to refresh, reload and reconnect. I cynically wonder whether there may be quality issues which may mean its easier to make it free than get complaints requiring refunds. Or perhaps it’s just a goodwill Christmas present.

For those of you wondering...that was our Elite Christmas gift😀

You’ll no doubt be disappointed - weren’t you hoping for a DVD of the new safety video?

That’s not funny!

It was interesting on NZ29 overnight - while it worked it was quite fast and really good - however multiple resets and a prolonged period when despite WiFi connectivity no internet connection - on other occasions internet showed as connected on plane console yet no internet although as I say overall the service was good. The FSM told me that there were 64 customers connected at one point which seemed high taking into account that at that point most wouldn’t have expected it to be free. There was no inflight announcement that it would be free. The customer facing page still asks you to switch to another device using a code but since there is no payment I wouldn’t be surprised if many customers don’t create several connections using different email addresses which would potentially add significant demand to bandwidth and I suggested this morning to the FSM that one should have to at least login with an Airpoints account number - he said he would suggest this in his Flight report. I made the same point that you did Steve that it might be unusable if too much competition for bandwidth especially if some customers had multiple devices connected at once and this could significantly affect customers being willing to pay for WiFi at a later time if the customer experience was awful.

Exactly the FSMs response!