bworrell

I've had a lot of problems lately as well... including having the SSID show up, connecting, but then never being able to sign in or do anything. It's getting very frustrating. On a recent transcon round trip LAS-EWR-MSY-LAX-LAS, it didn't work on the two longest segments (LAS-EWR and MSY-LAX) but did on the shorter ones.

dank0014

pushmyredbutton

Perhaps it's a function of where it's directed. I have a two-send strategy:

1. 1KVoice to express displeasure about malfunctioning Wifi and that I hope it is fixed for future flights. I do not mention a refund. Usually some miles/ETCs thrown my way for the trouble.

- then -

2. united.com/refunds to explicitly request a refund of the Wifi charges; I've never been denied here and it seems to go through pretty quick.

In the past I would ask for a refund from 1KVoice and get shot down half the time.

Aussienarelle

Seriously, United needs to do something about their WiFi reliability. Out of my seven most recent flights, the only flight where it did not drop every five minutes was LAX-SAN. Today my plane was supposed to have Direct TV but they swapped the aircraft but I did not know until I got on the plane to find no Direct TV and my book in my checked luggage. Think well the WiFi worked on LAX-SAN so it should be fine - nope. Every five minutes - gave up after an hour, SO frustrating. Guess there will be another ETC but seriously surely it would be cheaper for them to put Direct TV on all flights. FAs just shrugged their shoulders. I was in 1A so should not have had any issues. The FAs each asked me if I had the most recent United app, their general solution to the entertainment issue and I had to keep explaining the WiFi kept disconnecting - had nothing to do with any version of the app unless their app causes the WiFi to continually disconnect? Very, very frustrated.

Njsouwester

Two flights this week chicago - Tokyo - Chicago with no internet again. This is the fourth time this year with no internet services on internatinal flights..... anyone else experiencing this lately?

chavala

Aussienarelle

ETCs being issued are decreasing. Were $200 for the first few, then $150 for the last couple. Now down to $125 for yesterday's failure...just give me entertainment that works.

gldwebs

My last 2 flights I was able to pay for wifi and connect for about an hour. Then I would get disconnected and have to pay again. On the initial purchase I logged in with my account but for some reason after disconnecting it doesn't see I paid. Both times I was charged twice with 2 receipts.

Anyone experience this problem? It happened on my Samsung s8 phone.

(Ua has been nice enough to refund me the extra cost plus an ecv for $100)

InHouseCounsel

Same recent issues here over the past two weeks. It would either not connect or would connect long enough to charge me then boo me. Trying to log back in consistently got the message “did not,receive captcha”

malgudi

Same thing happened today on my iPhone. Paid for 2hrs, got disconnected after 30 mins. They rebooted to get going ... had to pay again.

Will write to UA (have receipts for 2hrs and 1hr, 30 mins apart!)

Huh??? This is bogus ...

demkr

How many years now has United had this insane problem with wifi? Since it's inception I've had the same problem - it works perfectly fine for the first half hour of the flight, then stops working. Either that, or it doesn't work at all.

Add this to the laundry list of why I stopped giving them my business. After years and years of promising to improve wifi, it's the same crappy situation it's always been.

Then, a few months ago, they start doing monthly subscriptions, which would be a fairly good deal if the wifi were actually reliable.

qisu

My experience is that the wifi reliability was much better in the past years. My sense is that coincidentally (or not) after the February 2018 implementation of the wifi subscription, I started to see massive degradation in wifi reliability. It used to be that maybe 10-20% of the the mainline flights that I try to use wifi would be inop for all or most of the flight. Over the last 3 month, that figure for me is well over 50%.

prometa

The having to pay twice issue occurs whenever the cabin crew resets the WiFi system. Apparently, the purchases/timer system is onboard instead of on some external server.

Has anyone noticed a difference in domestic WiFi service between the 737s with DirecTV and those without? I find the TV-equipped planes always have much better service and speed. I had attributed that to the lack of PDE keeping the in-plane WiFi bandwidth available, but now since even TV-equipped planes have PDE, my theory is flawed.

Right now I’m on a DIRECTV equipped plane and the WiFi is noticeably better than the last several flights I’ve taken.

LarryJ

The internet on all 737s is the same. PDE does not use any internet bandwidth. The PDE uses wifi bandwidth to communicate with the onboard server but the available wifi bandwidth is significantly greater than what is required for internet access.

prometa