smxflyer

https://onemileatatime.com/news/unit...ght-messaging/ (not my blog)

On much of the fleet today, rolling out to every wifi equipped plane by next summer. I noticed an app update enabling this was pushed out to my devices today.

malgudi

Do you have the updated app version?

SuperFlyBoy

One would need an app to enable this??

I thought I read some months ago that some pax were reporting that WhatsApp was working anyway without payment on some flights...

kevflyer

It'd be nice to have Google Voice too!

lsquare

Too bad Signal app isn't supported.

Will this work on UA's Dreamliners flying across the Pacific?

RobOnLI

Meant to post this yesterday as I saw a United app update on my iPhone and it said that free messaging was coming to United WiFi. I was wondering what it included. WhatsApp is hugely important to me.

To the poster above who said they thought WhatsApp was working on United....that's only if you paid for internet while on the plane. It has never worked for free (like it used to on DL but then stopped). So hopefully United is able to get this working correctly. I also don't understand the article that says you can send messages and emojis but not pictures. That must not apply to WhatsApp since everything goes through the same pipe on that app?!

PS - having to update the United app to use external apps like iMessage, FB Messenger and WhatsApp makes no sense to me. I'm guessing they just threw that in there so people would know it's coming but that the United app itself plays zero role in using the other three apps for free across their WiFi.

-RM

lsquare

Are iMessage and WhatsApp capable of sending encrypted messages on UA Wifi? I usually don't use Wifi anywhere outside of my home without a VPN.

Beltway2A

The title should probably read as some variant "Free Messaging for Apple and Facebook users" coming.

Edit: Thread has been retitled from "Free in-flight messaging coming" to "Free in-flight messaging coming (FB Messenger, Apple iMessage, WhatsApp)"

It doesn't seem like there's any support for SMS (even over Wifi), Signal or any other program. Us Android users who don't participate in the "Meta-verse" of data collection don't seem to be able to participate.

RobOnLI

I can't speak to encryption "on UA WiFi" but WhatsApp messages are E2E encrypted from sender to receiver.

But that's wrong. WhatsApp is a separate app. Yes, it's owned by Facebook but the two are wholly separate and FB is not required to use WhatsApp.

SMS relies on the carrier which isn't available via WiFi so that's not going to work. But iMessage can be sent via WiFi.

-RM

goyankees32790

A few years ago I was able to get imessages through on some 737s without paying for wifi. Hasn't worked since the pandemic, though.

Collierkr

I am not sure VPN of any sort works on inflight wifi. Anyone have success with this?

CALMSP

yeah, that started back in September 2016 when I first started to be able to do so, but its been since end of 2019 since that worked. Not sure why they somehow disabled that.

Beltway2A

I never said that Facebook is required to WhatsApp or that it wasn't a "separate" app. It collects the same data that Facebook does, and that data is further sold and used by Facebook. There's no difference between installing the two if you're interested in not handing over everything about yourself to Facebook.

Furthermore, Meta is merging all three messaging platforms (Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram). They use separate front-ends for now, but if a person isn't interested in handing over all their information to Zuckerberg and Co. it's a moot point altogether.

Android has had the ability to send SMS over WiFi for many years now (my first phone with the feature was in 2017). There's no reason it can't work with in-flight wifi, and does work with paid wifi. There was a conscious decision to cater this free feature only to iPhones.

lincolnjkc

That's not entirely true or perhaps an oversimplification... Yes true SMS as in the thing that rides in the GSM management overhead requires the carrier but plenty of SMS implementations tunnel the message through a pipeline that can be used on Wi-Fi. For example Verizon Wi-Fi calling or Android messages... I've sent and received plenty of SMS-terminated messages using in-flight Wi-Fi just up till this point paid.

Seems like for those Android of us who don't see any value add in WhatsApp this is a bit of a nothing burger...

​​​​​​​Oh yeah I've used the Cisco AnyConnect (last week) and IPSEC clients (pre Windows 10) to connect to my own corporate data centers and also a few clients, and the Palo Alto networks excuse for a VPN client to connect to some other clients... From all three Wi-Fi platforms United uses

seanp7

Confirmed this was on EWR-LAX this evening, 787-9.