May 22, 2013, 7:52 am

FlyerTalk Forums Expert How-Tos and Guides

Last edit by: gengar

Wifi Completion Status (Last Updated: 1/16/2015)
United Wi-Fi installation

Mainland USA

B737 - 187/253 Complete (74%)
B757 - 26/133 Complete (20%)

Worldwide Coverage

A319 - 55/55 Complete (100%)
A320 - 97/97 Complete (100%)
B747 - 24/24 Complete (100%)
B767 - 2/51 Complete (4%)
B777 - 42/74 Complete (57%)
B787 - 3/14 Complete (21%)

Worldwide Coverage Area

Satellite coverage may experience outages for reasons such as government regulations, weather and switching between satellite regions.

Gogo (PS Flights) Coverage Area

Pricing Data Points
City Pair / ~ Duration / Standard Cost / Premium Cost / Comments on Quality
747-400 (Panasonic):

SFO-FRA / 10 hrs / ?? / $22.99 / (5/2013) Peak speed was 6.5Mbps down, 2Mbps up. 700ms latency. awesome. (unavaca)
HNL-NRT / 8 hrs / $14.99 / $22.99 / The service worked all the way across the pacific, I was surprised at how reliable it was. The speediest I did topped out at .26mb, hardly "premium", but if you're ok with general web browsing and chatting with iMessage, it worked like a champ.
LAX-SYD / 14 hrs / $16.99 / No premium options. (Col Ronson) 3Mbps download speed test, worked for 95% of flight
SFO-HKG / 15 hrs / $16.99 / No premium option / (1/2014) (unavaca) speedtest immediately after wi-fi was available gave 700ms, 7Mbit down, 0.5Mbit up
BKK-NRT / 5 hr / $16.99 / No premium option / (SS255)
PEK-SFO / 11 hr / $16.99 / No premium option / Net access kept going down over the Pacific / Ookla speedtest 3.09 Mbps down, 0.23 Mbps up, 894ms RTT.

A319/A320 (Panasonic):

EWR-SFO / 6 hrs / $12.99 / $19.99 (IIRC)
EWR-SFO / 6 hrs / $14.99 / no premium option (3/2014) (greg99) speedtest 2498kbps d/l and an awesome 95kbps u/l (not a typo) 578ms latency
SFO-PHL / ~5.5 hrs / $14.99 / no premium option (4/2014) (qisu) didn't do speed test. good part of the flight had slow speed or no connection at all.
PHL-SFO / 6 hrs / $12.99 / no premium option (4/2014) (qisu) speedtest 2-3megabits down.
PHL-IAH / 4 hrs / $9.99 / $12.99 (IIRC, standard may have been $7.99?)
PHL-IAH / 3 hrs / $6.99 / no premium option [10/2013]
ORD-LAS / 3.5 hrs / $7.99 / No premium option. (lenscap)
ORD-SEA / 4 hrs / $9.99 / No premium option. (qisu)
ORD-LAX / 4 hrs / $8.99 / No premium option / speedtest peak 3mbps, average 600kbps to 1.5mbps
ORD-YVR / 4 hrs / $8.99 / No premium option / speedtest 3.86 Mbps to 10.70 Mbps down / 0.18 to 0.37 Mbps up - very reliable throughout the flight
IAD-LAX / 5 hrs / $12.99 / No premium option / speedtest peak 1.5mbps, average 400kbps to 800kbps, worked for 80% of flight but pretty spotty at times, but at least FA announced signal was poor
IAD-SEA / 5 hrs / $12.99 / No premium option / A319
SFO-LAX / 1 hr / $3.99 / No premium option / A319 (greg99)
SFO-ORD / 4 hr / $9.99 / No premium option / A320 / Pretty reliable, up most of the flight
IAH-SEA / 4.5 hrs / $8.99 / no premium option A320 (6/2014) (qisu) speedtest 5megabits down, 0.2 megabits up.

City Pair / ~ Duration / Standard or Limited Access Cost / Premium or Full Access Cost / Comments on Quality
737s (Thales LiveTV): [prices are per-hour]

IAH-TPA / ?? / $1 / $2 / (2/2014) (ssullivan) 23-25Mbps downstream (Premium/full access service). No service over Gulf of Mexico.
MIA-EWR / 2 hr / $1 / $2 / (3/2014) (hirohito888) 16Mbps down, 1Mbps up [not sure if this is for the regular or full access]
PDX-IAH / 4 hr / $1 / $2 / (4/2014) (qisu) regular was very slow, speed test about 100kilobits down.
SEA-IAH / 4 hr / $1 / $2 / (5/2014) (edcho) full access was speedy. 22 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up. Ping was 700ms.
SEA-IAH / 4 hr / $1 / $2 / (6/2014) (qisu) full access, 5-15 Mbps down, 0.2 Mbps up.

United Launches Satellite-Based Wi-Fi Service

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Jan 15, 2013, 3:10 pm

#61

Red_Rob

Join Date: Apr 2010

Location: IAH

Programs: UA/CO-GS/PPlat,AA-Gold,SPG-Plat,Hilton-Diamond,Marriott-Plat,Hertz-Pres_Circe

Posts: 824

Quote:

Originally Posted by EggSS4

Wondering if they will have a provision in place to have wifi on multiple devices (e.g., PC and iPad) or whether the user would have to pay twice.

You can login with your MP number and transfer to a new device (i.e. 1 at a time, but can use multiple devises).

I used it on a domestic Airbus recently, and without paying I was able to access flight stats, and the United App also worked (I used it to successfully check the gate of a connecting flight and to submit an outperform recognition).

Jan 15, 2013, 3:17 pm

#62

vnatraj

Join Date: May 2010

Programs: UA Premier Platinum

Posts: 249

Quote:

Originally Posted by ncorman

New threads coming soon:

- Sunspots interfered with my WiFi connection, what compensation is due?
- I have faster internet on my smart phone than on United.
- Why didn't my flight on United Express have WiFi?
- The person next to me used their iPad (or tablet) all flight and kept me up... what compensation should I get?
- The flight tracker said we arrive at 10pm, but we arrived at 10:15pm causing me to miss TMZ

Hilarious.

Jan 15, 2013, 4:02 pm

#63

unavaca

Join Date: Jun 2007

Location: YVR SFO

Programs: UA G

Posts: 4,866

Quote:

Originally Posted by aacharya

http://www.united.com/web/en-US/cont...wifi/faqs.aspx

Grumble. I can't find the "expand all" button on that page.

Jan 15, 2013, 4:07 pm

#64

unavaca

Join Date: Jun 2007

Location: YVR SFO

Programs: UA G

Posts: 4,866

Quote:

Originally Posted by flash1129

Ping: 763ms
Ping: 657ms

This makes me so sad and is yet another reason that the tech community in SFO will continue flying VX. Sub-250ms pings on GoGo beats the pants off of the 3/4 seconds you're getting above. Those latencies will make ssh sessions unusable. Sigh.

Jan 15, 2013, 4:09 pm

#65

MatthewLAX

FlyerTalk Evangelist

Join Date: Feb 2007

Location: Los Angeles / Basel

Programs: UA 1K MM, AA EXP, Hyatt Globalist

Posts: 26,912

I paid $21.95 for gogo on a 5hr p.s. flight last week. Seems odd (but good news) that even on a flight to SYD, high speed will be under $20. I'll be happy to pay that...

Jan 15, 2013, 4:14 pm

#66

5khours

Join Date: Sep 2009

Programs: UA GS>1K>Nothing; DL DM 2MM; AS 75K>Nothing>MVP

Posts: 9,341

Great news. Free for GF, GS, 1k would be nice.

Jan 15, 2013, 4:15 pm

#67

edcho

Join Date: May 2011

Posts: 5,814

Quote:

Originally Posted by unavaca

I usually get around this by opening up an SSH session on some other computer and connect to that computer via RDP.

It's not perfect but it makes it bearable.

Jan 15, 2013, 4:17 pm

#68

unavaca

Join Date: Jun 2007

Location: YVR SFO

Programs: UA G

Posts: 4,866

Quote:

Originally Posted by edcho

I usually get around this by opening up an SSH session on some other computer and connect to that computer via RDP.

It's not perfect but it makes it bearable.

How's it better? You're still waiting 3/4 of a second to see the character you just typed on the screen.

Quote:

Originally Posted by 5khours

Great news. Free for GF, GS, 1k would be nice.

...and will never happen. The people most likely to pay for the service definitely aren't going to get it for free.

Last edited by iluv2fly; Jan 15, 2013 at 7:48 pm Reason: merge

Jan 15, 2013, 4:23 pm

#69

star_world

Suspended

Join Date: Jan 2001

Location: ORD / DUB / LHR

Programs: UA 1K MM; BA Silver; Marriott Plat

Posts: 8,243

Quote:

Originally Posted by unavaca

That's about the only aspect of GoGo that is better though. There is significantly less throughput available for the aircraft, and the coverage on GoGo is extremely patchy.

If more than a handful of people are using the connection on a GoGo-equipped aircraft I've noticed the performance deteriorates dramatically, and your 250ms RTD becomes 2000+, with large amounts of packet loss.

If you have a more consistent level of performance and can achieve ~700ms without a wide variation then it makes real-time traffic such as SSH very usable. I've worked with satellite connections for years and I can assure you huge numbers of people use them with command line applications.

This system is significantly more advanced than the CDMA-based system used by GoGo - and the huge difference in available bandwidth is what will have the biggest effect for most users.

A huge portion of the tech community in SFO lives on web-based applications by the way - which also work perfectly over a higher-latency link such as this.

Jan 15, 2013, 4:31 pm

#70

edcho

Join Date: May 2011

Posts: 5,814

Quote:

Originally Posted by unavaca

How's it better? You're still waiting 3/4 of a second to see the character you just typed on the screen.

Actually -- i'm not sure how, it just works better for me.

Seems to be better when you are receiving large amounts of information (try doing a "show tech" on a cisco switch on a plane or satellite connection). I guess if you are trying to program using vi or something, I can see that being a pain in the butt.