> * If you are on a short haul flight, it's going to be disconnected for takeoff/landing so you will get a solid 30m
I worked on inflight wifi for Qantas, where they share the highest trafficked route in the world - the 60 minute light between Sydney and Melbourne. It was a huge win for the project when we got clearance to enable wifi on the ground for takeoff.
I have the same flight stats and I have only had to ask for a refund once because it straight up didn’t work for most of the flight. Many airlines have very usable internet now, some even for free (jetBlue).
It depends a lot where you fly. In my experience, flying over Europe means the internet will almost certainly be spotty at best, whereas flying over the US means that it will probably work well enough to be useful.
It must have gone downhill since my last flight with them. I vividly remember getting something like 18 Mbps in a speed test and was shocked that they were giving it away.
It makes sense, if everyone streams then it'll create significant congestion once awareness rises due to people trying to use Netflix/Hulu/Disney+ etc. Better to offer people a free tier to allow folk to WhatsApp, FB, tweet, whatever and effectively manage the bulk of traffic through the paid tier.
I recently flew across country with jetblue and since I haven't flown in over 10 years I appreciated the wifi. However, I found I couldn't stream a music video on my phone without buffering. Fortunately if I turned off the video the music played fine. It was OK for reading hacker news and the like.
On the return flight it just didn't even work. Fortunately, I'd had newpipe download some content before we left.
