treeofnikJetBlue makes you watch an ad to connect to wifi
TheRealCharlesEamesSo does Delta/T-Mobile
IamAnonymousIsn’t the WiFi free? It’s free for a reason. You aren’t forced to use it.
darkdemizeFor real. I’d rather watch an ad than have to pay $10+ for a couple hours of wifi.
I mean they paid for the flight
Tier 1 Build-A-Bear 🧸Not all flights include Wi-Fi, even if the plane is equipped with it
GhostalmediaAnd they’re getting a flight.
Flights have amenities. Some give you free food, some free wifi.
None of it is actually free of course. It’s just that the cost is included in the ticket price.
owatnextI don’t want food or WiFi. I want legroom so I can sleep. I don’t want seatback entertainment. I don’t want a complimentary tea towel, blanket, and neck pillow. I don’t want your stupid cheapo earbuds. I don’t want Tim Tams and that little sachet of Vegemite with my toast. I don’t want your gross instant coffee. I don’t even want a flat white. I don’t care that you have soymilk. And thay muffin you gave me has egg in it. I told you I can’t have egg. I don’t want your little tiny tube of toothpaste with that miniature toothbrush. I don’t want to watch Adam Sandler’s Wedding Singer on that screen you have on the wall in front of the aisle. I want legroom. I want to watch the insides of my eyelids. I hate having to lay my legs sideways for hours and being unable to relax or sleep because I am knees-pressed against the seat in front of me. And that camera on the seat back freaks me out. Why why why. Just let me sleep.
Sorry. I got a bit agitated there.
Camera on the back of the seat? I haven’t seen that one yet, will have to bring tape on my next flight
Watch out for United. That was the seatback camera airline. Qantas was the better of the ones I have been on. At least I could put the iPad with a camera in the seat pocket on Qantas.
no plans
Advertisers could be charged more depending on whether their ads are played while the flyer appears awake or not. Yayyy
Smile: Some airliners have cameras on seat-back screens
Now there is one more place where cameras could start watching you — from 30,000 feet. Newer seat-back entertainment systems on some airplanes operated by American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and Singapore Airlines have cameras, and it's likely they are also on planes used by other carriers.
Legroom is probably the most expensive thing to give on a plane, so if you want legroom, pay for the privilege and fly business class. Otherwise, at least try to enjoy the few concessions you get from the airline
Oh I’ll enjoy the little mini spy camera on the back of the seat alright.
I mean if the price of wifi is offset by showing a single ad, it seems preeeetty stingy after you already paid for a seat.
danOther airlines make you pay $6-$10 for the wifi. Wouldn’t you rather watch one ad and get it for free?
You’re talking about what is, and I’m talking about what could be.
No. No I wouldn’t. I never want to be forced to watch an ad.
You’re not forced to though… You could just not use the wifi.
spirit CEO ^
I understood the mildly infuriating aspect to be how airlines find a way to extract value from you at every step of your trip.
I still open Plex and sync a bunch of shit to my phone or tablet before I take any flights. Old-school is still the way.
MissJinxis it free? I mean you either pay with money, time and/or data.
JilanicoIf the ad is short and subsidizes free wifi, I ain’t mad. But if the ad is unreasonably long, or if I have to keep watching ads every x minutes to use WiFi, it becomes a problem. Not sure what the case is here, but it should be spelled out on the screen so we know what we’re getting ourselves into.
It’s a single short ad and works better than any plane Wi-Fi I’ve ever used. OP has one of the most entitled takes I’ve ever seen.
The more infuriating thing will be realizing that the inflight wifi is basically only good for texting and email.
Jetblue’s wifi is pretty decent. Not sure what technology they’re using but it’s quite a bit faster than some of the other airlines that make you pay for it.
I flew Delta last year and got their free WiFi when I signed up for an account with them. Think it was for a loyalty program for every flight I flew with them and one of the perks was free WiFi.
I used it for streaming from my Plex server at home and watched 1984 and some other movies on my phone on the flight and don’t remember encountering any buffering or other issues the whole time. Was pleasantly surprised and grateful for that so I didn’t have to use their movie selection.
Though I do have to say they had a pretty good free selection to choose from. I remember even TV shows which I thought was weird like The Sopranos was on there. I just preferred choosing from my own library and continuing where I left off on my server.
I download from my Plex server to my local device (phone) for offline viewing
borariI like scrolling through the offerings because it clues me in to foreign language films I had no idea existed, then I add them to my sonarr library.
They can't be making much off this surely, how long would the ad have to be for it to even be worthwhile showing?
This comment reminds me that one time I came across an hour and a half long ad on YouTube that turned out to be a full episode of some show and something else. It was crazy to see one that long after skipping a couple ads
For a time, the Lego movie was an add on YouTube. The full thing. You could skip it after 5 seconds, but you had the option of watch the full movie.
Plane WiFi is a modern technological marvel and you’re lucky to be able to have it at all.
Not so long ago sat phones were the domain of the super rich, because they were paying several dollars per minute. Then it was down to 10 dollars for two hours of multiplexed satellite access. And now apparently it’s down to where advertising will work. That’s amazing.
I doubt the ads are streamed over the internet, this could easily be done with local storage.
Any plane internet I’ve used has been spotty and terribly slow, but then again, I haven’t bought it in years because of previous experiences.
SparkyThe speed is probably because you have to share 2mbps of bandwidth with 100+ people
I’ve been on some United flights that let you stream 4k video with no issue. It’s pretty uncommon, but it’s amazing when it’s there.
Was this 4k video from an arbitrary source, like a random YouTube video? Or from United’s website?
I haven’t flown outside is Southwest in a while, but they have a bunch of licensed video content that is hosted locally on the plane. And therefore cheap.
It’s content from places like Netflix or Hulu, or anywhere else on the general internet.
Plane wifi, in the Continental US, is typically done via cell networks. The plane just has stronger receivers and transmitters than your cellphone.
No, it’s mostly ViaSat (like in OP’s picture) now. Gogo never upgraded their infra to handle more traffic and kinda fell out of relevance. Planes with ViaSat will have large oval satellite domes on top that talk up to space.
It’s illegal to use your cell phone’s cell modem on a plane, because of an FCC rule, not an FAA rule. The cells in the cell network are designed for traffic on the ground. At cruising altitude, your modem can see way too many cells at once.
Possibly linuxYou might be able to bypass it with Orbot and a snowflake. Alternatively don’t use it.
Maybe they should make it so you can choose whether you want to watch an ad or pay. A lot of people will still choose to watch the ad.
Their schtick is free Wi-Fi, so it would kinda take away from their model.
At least they don’t charge like $10 per hour to go at 64 kbits
More infuriating is the forced login on the infotainment screen. That’s extremely infuriating
I once had a flight in two legs where the first leg was operated by a well known established airline for an okay ish price and the second leg was operated by a “sister” airline that did shorter ultra low cost flights. The first flight had infotainment screens and a few other minor comforts that are standard for economy flights these days and make it just slightly more bearable, whereas the 2nd flight had no screens, no food without paying separately and just made as uncomfortable as possible on purpose.
During the first flight, you could use their crappy as screens on the back of the chair in front or connect to their local network with your own device, which was free and didn’t involve any shenanigans like ads or accounts. I made use of the service which worked by entering a URL printed on the back of the chair in front. On the second leg, there was no screens and no apparent mention of an onboard entertainment offering through your own devices but there was some sort of QR code which I assume was supposed to take you to a payment portal or something but which didn’t even work. It was a different URL to the first flight.
I still had my tab open from the first flight though, and when I accidentally opened that tab on the second flight, I got access to the seemingly hidden entertainment service with no payment or logins or anything. Seems that sometimes it’s just a question of knowing the magic URL.
ChaoticNeutralCzechIs there a way to capture these pages and report them to uBlock filter authors once online? I’d like to add a filter (or better, userscript that just enables and “clicks” the “continue” button) for my country’s rail company’s Wi-Fi captive portal but the JavaScript is obfuscated or compiled from another language so I have no idea what anything does, and of course the element classes are all randomized.
theotteroneCan confirm that on Android with Firefox mobile + ublock origin the ads wouldn’t load and you were able to skip quite fast. (Not agreeing with the ads being displayed at all, that’s just a greedy move)
I am talking about the cdwifi.cz captive portal with its 30-second video ad. I cannot just disable large media because then the “Continue” button never gets enabled.
Wireguard vpn+pihole and you won’t need to watch those ads. Set it up to use an ntp port, and you won’t have to sign in to use the wifi.
Hold up, using the ntp port to skip WiFi sign in is a game changer. Any way to do that with Tailscale on iOS?
I have no idea how to do that on tailscale as I use pivpn on a vps. It works on Norwegian airlines and SAS, but I assume other systems might block traffic differently.
Definitely worth a bit of research to see if it’s feasible (or potentially just set up wireguard for those cases).
Thanks!
ulternoNice one.
But now that you outed the secret, we just need to QoS the NTP port.
I have all this, except the NTP port… Any advice on how to set this part up?
I just set up the server to listen on port 123/udp(ntp). You can also try port 53 although that isn’t always reliable.
Thanks, I saw you mention SAS. I fly with them often, I might try this out.
Ntp is the time protocol, right?