Wi-Fi to Hawaii?
 

I am flying Sea to Kona later this week - does Alaska’s wifi work on 737-9 max (ETOPS) over the ocean?

Flew a MAX 9 to HNL last week. Wifi was fine. Even better if you have T-Mobile because it's free! I was able to watch part of the Thursday Night Football game before landing.

See:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alas...-hawaii-4.html
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alas...lite-wifi.html

quick question - i have tmobile - but only seem to be able to access it via my phone - can this be put to my laptop??

check: alaskafleetstatus.weebly.com - any aircraft with 2ku has satellite wifi and you can stream all that way to hawaii!

The aircraft you gotta watch out for are the 738 - those arent all retrofitted yet.

not easily, unless you have an android phone that can share your wifi (various google pixels and some others I'm not aware of):
https://support.google.com/pixelphon.../2812516?hl=en

it's also possible to share the wifi connection via bluetooth, but i've not tried this myself:
https://www.electronicsforu.com/spec...ng%20Bluetooth.

thats not what tmobile expressly outlines in thier benefits.....i am still paying the 8 dollars i thought i would have saved.....

it for sure could be written clearer on the marketing page (https://www.t-mobile.com/benefits/travel/in-flight-wifi), but when you look at the FAQ it says:

Quote:

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What is In-Flight Connection?

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wifi works

It totally depends on whether the plane has been retrofitted with satellite wifi - in my experience, it's been less than 50/50 sadly.

The other option I like to use is a travel router. Just did that this past weekend on a 737-900 (flying SEA-HNL) to share Tmobile-provided wifi from my iPhone with my iPad and my wife's laptop.

As others have stated, it's a near certainty you'll have 2Ku wifi if you're on a 737-900 or Max9. The only active ETOPS-certified one of those that doesn't currently have 2Ku wifi (N948AK) was only brought into service a week ago. On a 737-800, your odds drop a bit. There are still a dozen of those without 2Ku out of the 47 that are ETOPS-certified (so you'll have a 75% chance of wifi). If you want to know ahead of time, look up the tail number for your flight on alaskaair.com/flightstatus and then cross-reference that with what's reported on Weebly for that plane.

Just to follow up on my previous post, perhaps it's easiest just to list the planes on which you won't have 2Ku wifi when flying to Hawaii. As of 10/3/2022, if you're on any of the following dozen 737-800's, you won't have 2Ku wifi:

N534AS
N536AS
N537AS
N560AS
N563AS
N564AS
N579AS
N583AS
N584AS
N586AS
N593AS
N596AS

If your flight to Hawaii is not on any of these and you don't have 2Ku wifi, then either it's busted or you're on a MAX9 which was only recently brought into service (they don't come with 2Ku wifi enabled off the assembly line, and it seems to be taking AS about 1-2 months after initially bringing them into service to retrofit/enable the capability).

Some new MAX9 still without wifi
 

With some probability that new MAX9's are flying Hawaii routes, it's never a sure thing. I got one of those MAX9 flight with no wifi, albeit full working entertainment.

Jiburi

Wifi worked on my flight, and Amazingly well. Super impressed for the middle of the ocean for $8

I'm not sure if it's just a coincidence or something to it or not but a couple times on wifi-enabled planes to/from Hawaii when I didn't sign-on and pay early on I was unable to do so. It just stalls endlessly on the payment screen. Curious if anyone else has noticed this or had any other problems. My laptop is a modern Lenovo laptop, Win10.