United Wifi is Unusable / Problems Connecting to United_Wi-Fi
 

Have used the wifi now twice on cross country trips and it is abysmal. The service is much worse than AA or US Air.

Which system? UA has three different ones.

April Fools?

Sorry, the United sponsored one on the Airbuses.

I was on the last flight yesterday night LGA-ORD and the wifi was abysimal.

:D Pretty slow rollout of wifi...

flew ord-hnl 2 weeks ago......all inflight entertainment was gone, wifi was a joke and had to rely on the laptop(which i swore i would not bring)and my daughter and her friend making faces at me for 9 hrs as entertainment.....get a good wifi system going or just leave it ala spirit....rediculous

Only one data point but I used united wifi (airbus) a couple weeks ago and was pleasantly surprised. Connection was fast, price ($7) was right.

of course, that's the only time I've even seen it offered.

Flew BKK->NRT->SFO->ORD a few weeks back. Honestly Wifi was much better than I expected especially on the TPAC leg from NRT->SFO. Not sure if this is related since OP was refering to cross country trips but thats my 2 cents.

Same hardware. Probably talking to different satellites along the way, but it is the same kit.

I did the same route last week, and I thought it was acceptable. I was surprised how useful it was.

Billy

I agree, I did 2 TPAC on 747 recently and both had Wifi that was stable and fast enough to keep me work productive.

The wifi on 737 is also pretty good, especially at the $2/h price.

i haven't had any problems with the wifi the last couple months on several flights.

I had a 320 a week or so ago where I pulled out my laptop just to check out the wi-fi. Of the big 3 browsers, only Firefox could load www.united.com. I played around fixing some seat assignments, and it literally took me about 7 minutes just to change seats on a 4 segment itinerary.

Admittedly, I didn't pay anything for the service, just holy cow, that's just unbelievable. Who pays for this stuff?

BKK-NRT-SFO Same for me. I was surprised how well it worked after hearing all the complaints.

Last week A320 BOS-IAH equipped...system was totally down entire flight and unusable. Later in the week IAH-BOS...$9.99 and could barely send small emails or timed out for the entire flight. Granted full flight so bandwidth was probably slim to nil but still a joke when UA is sending out marketing emails reminding you that the plane has wifi. Offered 5K miles for the troubles.

How did you get the 5K miles? Did you write to 1Kvoice?

I'd be happy to buy 5K miles for $9.99! And get some 14.4K internet for free!

Haha exactly!!! Yeah I wrote to 1kvoice stating my frustration that they are marketing a service that is clearly not reliable and consistent. While I enjoy being disconnected I had booked these specific flights in order to get some work done which was not possible at all. Stated the facts and they quickly responded with that offer.

I know it says you can access united.com for free, but the system seems to relegate the free access requests to the back of the queue. I've had the same issue, then paid, and voila - speed increased from worthlessly slow to only frustratringly slow.

I'd like to hear some others chime in on this.

From a technical standpoint, this just seems surprising. The only free content is United.com so it seems like United would want their customers to be able to access it. Heck, somebody might even buy a ticket!

I've found it to be a mixed bag. It's been very hit or miss on both the Gogo system used on ps and the more common global satellite system (Panasonic?). Haven't had a change to try the system in DirecTV planes yet. Personally, I'm glad they chose a global system over a CONUS-only system, even if it does take a bit longer to iron out. They always refund me if the service truly sucks anyways.

I have been on 3 separate flights which "supposedly" offered wifi. Not one worked... Couldn't even get to the page to give them my $$, :rolleyes:

But the united.com page sure seemed to work just fine :mad:

I must be in an alternate universe. The last month or two I've found wifi to be very available (10 out of 10 on my last airbus flights). I've been impressed with speed too, I think it's often as fast or faster than when teathered to my iPhone on AT&T LTE.

I know UA had a rough period last year and early this with roll out but I think it's fairly solid now (assuming you're on a plane with it installed). The only thing ice noticed is that it takes 5-10 minutes to fire up after clearing 10k feet (red to green icon) but after that it's been good for me. Well worth the $7-10 and far superior to the old flip down screens.

Clearly I seem to be in the minority.

BTW, I haven't tried using any of the free offers so I cannot comment on the speed there.

The sad thing is that UA WiFi has actually gotten BETTER since I made this post: http://upgrd.com/blogs/cloudcommutin...e-results.html

I was on p.s. today JFK-SFO and the Gogo wifi was nearly unusable. Times of minutes to load a single web page.

My experience matches most here - Transocean flights have been surpirsingly good - CONUS intolerable. Maybe no one on OTW flights thinks its avaialable so it's all mine but who knows - and agree with all - other airlines seem to be able to manage this much better... I read somewhere that it costs about $200k per plane to convert to wifi availability - that's not chump change....

Wifi
 

I've been on a number of ORD/SFO/ORD flights in the past few months. I've used wifi on all and it's been great. Fast and reliable. Reasonably priced minor downtime issues but if it went down came back within 10-20 min. Either way I was happy with it

I submit that this, or the theme, is key -- available bandwidth and usage. And moreover, vis a vis streaming. Not just on United, not just in the air. Notice that when we're on a flight, on a train, on a long haul bus, in an airport, or in a hotel where and when there are likely many people streaming - including live TV and video games - the speed is up, down, up, down etc., sometimes slowing to a stall? You'll be flying along - even just doing emails - and then you're not. And you're never sure if it's you until it eases up and you're off and running again. "Ahhhh ... it wasn't me."

I suggest that many hosts, when they purchased the equipment, didn't acquire the capacity for today's and future demands. Slightly OT, I find this to be a regular phenomenon particularly at hotels, and notably in hotels that are in a hotel cluster. Particularly between about 8 and 11 pm. Even when they've tried to compensate by providing several routers. And on transportation, particularly near the beginning and the end of the trip.

Back to United, it's unclear where they are on this progress continuum, but accounts on the ground - er, in the air - raise questions that we see here.

Paging Consumer Reports?

You'll get no argument from me that wifi is the future: I think they're right on target with pricing, and in prioritizing it above other types of inflight entertainment and service. What's appalling to me is how slowly and inconsistently they're rolling it out. I fly BOS<>SFO once or twice a month. This is a nearly seven-hour flight when traveling westward -- the longest continental nonstop they fly -- and 90% of the time I'm on an older 752 with neither wifi nor power, even in F.

My last trip I sat next to an intermittent UA flyer who was simply incredulous. Couldn't imagine why a tech manager like myself would choose UA over VX or B6 on this route.

He has a point.

hmm
 

well, on BOS-SFO you choose UA over AA as AA requires a connection.

So, if you want a nonstop, you fly UA. Wifi will be there eventually, fleeting decisions aren't really made based on wifi, they're based on economics of the aircraft for the particular mission. BOS-SFO is high volume and decent fares. They need the capacity of a 757 on certain flights/ times of day. So that's where it's assigned.

This is an interesting observation. I've been wondering about this but never paid to test it. I've had 6-7 Airbus flights with wifi this year and each time experimented with united.com to see what the speed and reliability would be, and every time I've been disappointed.

As a result, I had decided that I would never waste money on such a terrible product, and I assume others have come to the same conclusion. If your observation is indeed a fact, United needs to state this somewhere. I would have purchased wifi on probably half of these flights had I trusted that it would be better after purchase. Just a simple asterisk on the wifi home page that discloses the free wifi speed is not "full speed".

Or JetBlue which is also rolling out WiFi faster than the Panasonic kit UA is running and they're deploying it very quickly as well.

Most (all??) of the old 752s aren't going to get WiFi. They're also not going to be around much longer.

+1
3/31 NRT-ORD, worked well over the Pacific and all the way until before landing at ORD.

Oh that's right
 

I forgot JetBlue was on the route. They have up to 3 flights a day and united has up to 7. So I guess if they fly when I need it I could choose it over united. Don't think wifi would be the deciding factor. Just me though

Are you still talking about BOS-SFO? Like everyone has said, AA doesn't even fly that route. Seems like a rather obvious reason.

I fly that route maybe 10x/year, virtually always on UA, and I don't have a strong preference between the "old" 757 and the "new" 737. Seems about a wash as far as the actual user experience.

I wouldn't choose B6 in Y over UA in F, just because they have wifi.

Charge for wifi
 

Sorry if this has been discussed/is a dumb question, but is there a charge for wifi throughout the plane or only in Y?

All passengers are charged as of now; no comp for premium cabin.

This is what I think. On my NRT-SFO flight I asked the FA if there was wifi onboard and he said "I have no idea". I only happpened to notice on the BKK-NRT flight by accident when I was putting my ipad into airplane mode. No announcements on either flight.

UA flight status will always tell you before the flight, because the computer system obviously knows which plane is flying.

Geez, lighten up. My seatmate's manner clearly implied that AA still flew a nonstop on the route. They used to when I was in college, so I was under the impression they still did. Apparently VX and B6 scared them off.

It's so easy to see why new users are turned off by the hostility on this board.