CaroFos

Just an observational post for anyone not 'au fait' with the set up of WIFI enabled comms on the LCY service to JFK!

Having experienced a bit of an medical emergency back home whilst in transit, I was very grateful that I was able to text and indeed, it was deemed extremely beneficial to the team assessing the situation on the ground... however, I just got the bill today which ran at £91.00 !

I had deliberated whether to sign up for 50Mgs of data at £30 or just go with £1 a text and chose the latter as I thought I'd be sending/receiving less than 30 texts (which I did) ... but obviously a text is counted in characters and some texts being somewhat long-winded must have cost about £5 each!!

Given the gravity of the situation at the time the cost is not not important and indeed, it was awesome to be able to be in touch, but just thought I'd post to share experience in case people in a take it or leave it situation!

Texting over 'Onair' is probably like tweeting... each £1 text is limited to a certain number of characters?

Does anyone have any insight to add in case buying the data bundle works out cheaper?

But just to reiterate... having the option to keep in touch is an incredible bonus and I am so glad I was on the LCY plane and not a 777/747 to NY at that time. It would be great if BA rolls it out across the fleet at some point.

Doccykins

An SMS is wrapped as 160 characters so even though you were only sending one 'text' it would have added another 'message' each time you went over that limit (so even a 161 character message would have been £2) - Personally I would have always gone for the 50MB rather than pay as you go but in an emergency I can see why you took the option you did.

Glad the service helped you out though!

bluemoon68

SMS (text) messages are 160 characters max, anything over that is another text.

Exact costs will depend on the network you are with and their roaming charges.

corporate-wage-slave

It's a 2G system in reality, not wifi, and as already noted, it depends a bit on your service provider what they are going to charge. They are all incredibly difficult to locate online, they do hide the info, here is the link for EE (Orange and T-Mobile of yore):

http://explore.ee.co.uk/roaming/ee/aircraft

They charge £1 per outgoing message, and each message can have up to 160 characters. The MB limit in itself wouldn't help much on text messages, since that operates differently to 2G web access, but the 5 MB package would save a packet if you were using email or online text emulators, including Orange's own website front end for texting.

HIDDY

The LCY-JFK service was often touted on here as being a 'premium service' with fares to match. I guess it isn't that premium after all or they wouldn't be charging for WIFI.

GentleGiant

Often a picture message is much cheaper than an SMS when abroad

on a plane or ship on Three an SMS is 50p whereas a picture message is 17.4p!

Passmethesickbag

Good lord. Take-home message: If you need to stay connected, choose AA and pay $19 for unlimited and (these days) pretty reliable access throughout the flight.

The Business Class seats aren't bad either.

flatlander

I don't think the service on the Babybus is WiFi. It's a mobile telephony service, GSM (with EDGE) and I'm afraid that has a strong effect on charging.

Any telephony service provided away from home or in unusual circumstances (such as 35000 feet over the Atlantic) has to be assumed to be expensive until proved otherwise. I have shied away from the data services on the babybus for this reason, and because I couldn't find any indication of charges. I'm afraid I feel justified (a decade working in telecoms including writing billing system software taught me well ).

Probably even had you purchased the 50MB (I assume that's what you mean) at £30 that would not have included any SMS which are charged separately, so you would have ended up paying £30 + £91! I'm afraid SMS is always charged by the message which is 160 characters. Handsets will easily allow messages to be split into several SMS when sending and will usually reassemble them on receipt, but the telephone network sees multiple messages and charges accordingly.

(Unless you send an MMS which is a different beast altogether with yet another set of charging rules, which is fairly easy to do with modern handsets if you send complex emoji or to multiple recipients. Given the even more inflated cost of MMS over SMS, it's probably better to turn off the "send text message to multiple recipients as MMS" in most situations).

(Additional complexity comes from applications like Apple iMessage which mixes use of packet data and SMS without being clear to the user, offering another way to get a price shock).

The pricing of the babybus telephony service is risible. Only those for whom money is really no object would pay those costs. For example loading the first page of the LHR3 connection thread involves sending and receiving a total of about 3MB of data and even the first page of the BAEC forum here is about 0.8MB. 15-50 pages of Flyertalk for £30 at EDGE speed is an expensive joke. It's basically a slow email-only service, and don't attach any large documents either.

BA should remove the OnAir service immediately and replace it with a Panasonic (or other) satellite WiFi system and price it like AA ($19 for a flight).

AA_EXP09

or SQ (if you have a Starhub SIM, you can roam for SGD30)
EK is also a good option for flights to the Far East.

Passmethesickbag

Yes —.but I was thinking specifically of the JFK route.

UKtravelbear

Well as they say you can't put a price on your health!

OP despite the heart attack you undoubtedly suffered on receipt of the bill I hope you made a rapid recovery from your illness.

bafan

In my view the business seats are pretty awesome. And the wifi is good value.

Calchas

The fares are the same as LHR-JFK (actually they are just filed as LON-NYC) (although availability is more restricted).

T8191

I. Must. Resist. Temptation.

TPJ

For free on TK - for those in C (paid or on FF redemptions). Just for the record as flying from LON via IST to JFK might not be a wise idea