umeed21

IMO, in time to come UA may have to introduce complimentary in-flight messaging as well in order to compete with one of its strongest competitors. It may not be in the very near future, but I feel that time is not very far away

sdix

Was on EWR-SJC Friday and was getting app alerts on the whole trip as well as imessage without paying for the WiFi. A little surprising because I couldn't actually get on and pay for the wifi.

bob_the_d

imessage and hangouts working is not a perk. it's a glitch in the network protocol blockers.

the more you pull at that thread, the higher the chance UAL will fix the glitch.

pray they do not fix the glitch.

DENviaLAX

I hope not. One of my favorite things about flying is getting away from and feeling disconnected from the rest of the world for a few hours.

Polytonic

Judging by how inconsistent inflight wifi is, I'm sure you'll be able to get away with "the wifi wasn't working" excuse.

thejaredhuang

Before UA did the blanket unitedwifi.com landing page the sUA 752s on P.S. had the regular Gogo inflight which offered T-Mobile customers free texts over wifi if their phones had wifi calling.

goalie

Bolding mine" I discovered this completely by accident PBI-EWR (737)* this past May with my iPhone in airplane mode, wifi on and sound off. I was charging my phone with it sitting on my thigh and while dozing in and out of sleep, my phone vibrated with an iMessage from goalie-mom telling me they might be a few minutes late picking me up after my connecting flight EWR-SFO. goalie-mom and I "chatted" throughout the flight and I also had a "conversation" with another f/t'er as well**

*goalie-mom's first message came thru shortly after we reached 10,000 feet when wifi was turned on and the conversations I had continued thru cruising altitude until we reached 10,000 feet on descent when wifi was turned off

**complete with the fat fingered messages being sent to goalie-mom instead of a f/t'er and vice versa

eng3

WIFI has actually always been free for me. Everytime I pay for it, it stops working half way though the flight if at all. So I either get a refund or it won't let me request a refund and customer service gives me $100 ECT or something.

Aussienarelle

I for one love telling people they cannot contact me when I am flying as this allows me to catch up on my reading/thinking, etc. However I have noticed more "dinging" going on around me in the cabin in flight. As someone with ADHD the plane was the place I could focus as I can drown out background noise but the dinging/pinging breaks my attempt at concentration.

Please, if you are going to take advantage of this please put your phone on silent. Thank you in advance.

sbm12

It is a payment issue, not a technical one.

drewguy

+1. Have gotten push alerts and imessage on some domestic flights.