TTL

OT: but iPhone 7 can be a nuisance in plane. Yesterday a young Asian gentleman on a nearby seat was watching movies from his phone. After the phone battery ran out, the only alternative was to charge the phone - using the only connector there is - and let the phone speakers blast. Combine that with unrestricted web access up in the skies...

intuition

Fair enough, I have had only one flight (with 100% fail rate) so if it otherwise is reliable then I am way off. I never got to enjoy any improvement in the login procedure, as nothing besides the "internet will become available in 20 minutes after take off" ever loaded. The shopping portal was 100% reliabel, of course...

Now this may also be equipment related - perhaps their login pages only works for some devices, just like the www-pages. I use "outdated" equipment (iphone 6, no we can't afford to upgrade hardware every 6 months) so perhaps that is the culprit.

Purjelentaja

Very much doubt it, as if it works with my windows phone, I'm sure it'll work with anything even slightly more modern than abacus

heatsink

You'd think people flying business would have enough class to not do that.

Seriously? That's just incredibly rude. I would have complained to the crew.

I'm trying to imagine myself in one of these situations and I don't think I could get more than 5 seconds in without being overwhelmed by shame. I truly don't understand the mentality of these people. How can they focus on whatever they're watching when they know that they're bothering everyone else?

Furry

I heard a rumor last week that they have/will ban for example WhatsApp and Skype etc. (all programs where you can call through internet) from in-flight WiFi. Any recent experiences?

OH-LGG

It's here in Finnish:

http://www.tekniikkatalous.fi/teknii...aistaa-6641800

Purjelentaja

I understood of that article that voice call functions of whatsapp and skype etc have been prevented, but not use of those apps generally, and at least my experience from yesterday confirm that, as texting with whatsapp worked just fine.

miikka

I am suspecting security settings with iOS - I have seen exactly same with the newer iPhone/iPad hardware. And the trick which I shared earlier resolved it (go into the shopping portal and add an item into the basket, go back to the main portal page and the button magically gets enabled - someone else managed to get it working when going to customer support page and then returning). Most likely the new portal hasn't been properly tested with all devices and their more restrictive security settings, maybe the other parts of the portal are adding the missing cookie and then the main page also works out.

Alternative is to ask for voucher code and use the direct login page from Panasonic (https://inflight.pacwisp.net/FINNAIR/).

For me, WiFi has been very reliable and I think there was only one flight when I couldn't immediately access the WiFi because I couldn't get the voucher code after the IFE crashed.

Unfortunately I cannot test the theory next week like I was planning because my plans changed and I had to cancel HEL-JFK and had to go for BA flight without WiFi.

ffay005

AY has been rather generous with their wifi so far. No data caps and free for all elites (Silver isn't really an elite level anymore, is it?) and J pax. There are airlines that charge everyone for wifi, especially in North America but also IB does this. I don't know what LH, LX, BA, CX etc do. Does BA even have wifi? Apparently QR does charge everyone, too. In that respect, I do understand the change of policy, however charging J pax is not understandable, not for AY or any other airline for that matter. Paying thousands for your ticket and then an extra 20 € for wifi just seems ridiculous.

However, as long as the AY wifi is as unreliable as it is now, I think charging for it is a little questionable. AY will probably refund nothing if you end up paying for a non-working connection, but I wonder what's going to happen after 1000 people pay for their non-working wifi and then dispute the charge with their CC company since they didn't get what they paid for...

What I would to once the reliability has improved is to offer free wifi throughout the flight for Platinums and J pax and half-price wifi for Golds and Silvers. While half-price is worse than free, it's definitely better than 60 minutes free. The list price is still pretty reasonable, so to pay half price wouldn't really be that bad.

If they are going to ban WhatsApp texting, then the whole wifi becomes useless. For me, the best thing about the wifi is just that – to chat with your friends so time goes by faster. Let's hope they won't do that.

Of course, emails are a nice feature, too, but for actual web surfing the connection isn't very fast.

OH-LGG

Why WhatsApp texting would be blocked? Ban was about calling WhatsApp.

reflektia

They have been blocking ports, previously SSH worked just fine but recently not anymore. Also different websites (more of them) are blocked nowadays.

intuition

Yes I saw that and that was why I started to think it is perhaps device related.

I have had issues with wifi at HEL, where it seems https:// calls are not answered anymore. This makes Apple's (stupid) "captive network assistant" fail (which works by constantly polling random URLs and if the answer isn't from the actual server it polled, the assistant knows it is inside a captive wifi and goes into log-in mode. When there is no reply, the assistant does not know what to do and does nothing, making it look to all applications like the telephone is online while it isn't.)
The solution in this case was to manually browse, specifically typing http:// which then triggers the log-in server of HEL to intercept your url and reply with log-in.

intuition

Everyone except F customers who are handed a voucher upon entering the cabin.

Ed Size

Since the internet never was reliable on any of my 10+ flights it is not much of a drawback. Only curious if the one hour is your total connection time, or if just counts down 60 minutes once you are logged in.

miikka

Hijacking a https session is generally a bad thing but most of the captive portals in hotels etc. do that. It causes several applications to get confused when the certificates do not match etc.

I thought that Apple captive portal detection is actually using only http, I typically use one of their URLs: http://captive.apple.com/hotspot-detect.html for manual detection. Google is using: http://clients1.google.com/generate_204

In general, it is always best to have some ready-made non-cacheable (or rarely visited) URL to access. Google is not a good option because it defaults to https.

For Finnair, I have bookmarked the important portal URLs and access them immediately after the WiFi gets enabled.