bocastephen

Bought a $69 monthly subscription to cover ONT-SFO-HKG/NRT-SFO-ONT/LAX-ORD-YYZ-ORD-LAX, which is a good price for all of those flights, especially when Amex reimburses it, but performance on ONT-SFO was almost non-existent until 20 min before landing, and SFO-HKG was slower than frozen molasses for most of the flight and genuinely unusable - I would receive notifications, then opening the app to review a single email took minutes. Delivering fast, reliable, consistent Wifi in 2018 should not be rocket science, but apparently to UA, it is

wco81

LarryJ

I ran into Oscar last week in Seattle and asked him about the wifi/internet issues. He said that fixing the wifi problems is a high priority. He was quite emphatic about it. He specifically mentioned the upgrades to the Panasonic-equipped airplanes but I also asked about the 737's Ka-based system and he said they are aware of the problems and are working on that as well. I have no idea how quickly we will see the results of those efforts.

On the 737, I've noticed a trend in the wifi/internet deferrals where they are scheduling those airplanes for replacement of the "AAU". I don't know what the AAU is but it apparently requires the aircraft to be schedule for a maintenance visit of at least ten hours as if seen that comment in some of the deferrals. While not a quick fix on a fleet of 329 737 NGs, perhaps they have been able to identify the problem and will be able to get it addressed.

sbm12

It is almost entirely "rocket science" given that it all depends on satellites and the associated on-board hardware. The antenna on the plane tracks a satellite 22,000+ miles away at speeds of 500mph. There are few places in the world more difficult or expensive to deliver a byte of data than on an airplane.

bocastephen

Strange, since other airlines seem to be able to deliver a reliable, fast, wifi connection tracking satellites 22,000+ miles away at speeds of 500mph. I guess they are much better at rocket science than United?

wco81

Supposedly a "Gen 3" model is suppose to be rolling out this year and completed by end of the year:

https://thepointsguy.com/2017/10/panasonic-wifi-fix/

Unclear on the bolded. Does UA have 1,750 aircraft to upgrade or is that all clients of Panasonic?

And what does "performance that we've all come to expect" mean?

Consistent, reliable streaming ? Or performance when Wifi was first rolled out in 2013 and TPG seems to be saying too many people are using airline Wifi on the Panasonic system, slowing down the throughput for everyone?

Does that mean there's a fixed satellite bandwidth capacity and that the new modems can just deliver a bigger part of the satellite network capacity to each aircraft?

I guess they're not going to launch satellites that often.

WineCountryUA

UA has about 750 mainline aircraft and removing the DirecTV (73x) and GoGo (sUA 752) -- you are probably 350 or so equipped with Panasonic ( Airbus 319, Airbus 320, select Boeing 757-200, select 757-300, 767-300ER, 767-400ER, 777-200, 777-200ER, 777-300ER, 787-8 and 787-9. )

3Cforme

That MacWorld piece is from 14 months ago. Delta has Gogo 2Ku on about 400 mainline aircraft. The widebodies and international business 757s have Ku. Avoid a 717, MD-88 or MD-90 and you'll probably get sat wifi on a mainline aircraft.

sbm12

Not really. The PAC system is what it is, on UA or other carriers. Global Eagle's kit on Southwest finally has enough bandwidth these days to almost keep up with demand, a result of significant recent investment in satellite capacity by the supplier. Inmarsat's "GX" service lacks sufficient capacity for its global demand profile And even Gogo has some markets where there's sufficient capacity and some where there is not.

That upgrade is running WAY behind schedule and not meeting the performance targets it was designed for in certain circumstances.

PAC is over 2200 GCS/eXConnect aircraft now; most need the upgrade (some were deployed in the past 9ish months with the new kit. A few hundred are now deployed with the new NewTec modem. UA was first on the list to get the new hardware but the work is behind schedule for a few reasons.

Mostly this.

In theory the old modem could deliver ~40Mbps to a plane. The new modem can do 10x that. But getting that much capacity from a satellite to a single aircraft isn't going to happen these days. Most vendors are trying to hover around 100Mbps as a reasonable number to deliver to an aircraft, but even pulling that off is challenging given the total capacity available and where the planes are flying.
Satellites continue to be launched, a few every year that serve the Ku or Ka services that aircraft need. Gaining access to that new capacity often requires the new modem as well. For example, a UA 777 flying TPAC should be able to get increased bandwidth from capacity PAC contracted for on Eutelsat 172b which recently entered service. But without the new modems working properly the on-board kit cannot "talk" to the new satellite so that capacity remains unusable for the planes that are not upgraded. A similar scenario exists for accessing new capacity on SES-14 and SES-15 that went into orbit during the past year or so.

And even if capacity was readily available odds are no pax are willing to pay what it costs to deliver it to the plane, particularly across oceans. A $20 full flight plan almost certainly is losing money for the airline offering it to passengers. Even a $40 full flight can be a money losing endeavor, depending on usage. And that's before we get into streaming levels of data consumption.

And, FWIW, using TPG as a source for inflight connectivity topics is going to leave you wanting for clarity and facts. The folks there just don't understand the industry and end up parroting a lot of press releases.

wco81

Hmm, going from 40 to 100 Mbps is a good increase but if the initial speed increase gets good word of mouth, they could easily get more people to buy wifi on planes and then that bandwidth is being shared by more people.

DCA writer

Almost every Google app--the Gmail app on my phone, Gmail in my browser, Google searches on my laptop--worked for free on this afternoon's ORD-PDX 737-operated flight, much as they did on a flight from ORD to LAS last month on a 737. I even had Facebook and Twitter notifications arriving on my phone, and I could read articles suggested by Google Now if they were AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages format) pages hosted on Google's cache. That last workaround also worked on a 764 a week ago.

My guess is that UA uses enough Google Analytics code on its WiFi portal that they've had to whitelist a lot of Google sites. That would explain Gmail and search working, and I will hypothesize that the Facebook and Twitter apps use Google's cloud messaging service on Android. But it doesn't explain why I could use Gmail on a 737 but not a 767; does the smaller plane having a Thales satellite-Internet system and the bigger one using a Panasonic setup make enough of a difference?

Weirder yet, a friend with an iPhone on the same PDX flight said Apple News also worked even though he didn't pay. I welcome your theories about that.

Srklaw7

another question...what will the wifi choices be on 753flight LAX to Honolulu?

WineCountryUA

Tricky question, about 40% of the 753's have DirecTV (so no internet access over the water) but the rest have a different system that should provide internet all the way.
Both versions will that PDE -- wifi accessible on board entertain

You should have a good idea of which a day or two before travel, but nothing is certain until your board.

AlanInDC

-- Even less certain whether it will work more than 10% of the flight

Lani1

Did Lax - Iad Tuesday

10 hours flight time, wifi worked only 5 to 6 hours