Observations and Considerations - Page 4 of 4

Sep 6 2016

Southwest Airlines WiFi – So Far So…Pretty Good (and Cheap)

The good news, I guess, is that recently I have been traveling a bit more so I’m finding myself in the position of using in-flight WiFi more. Hopefully, these reports will help you understand what airlines offer what service, and how good that service is. Of course, this is just my experience. Yours may vary.

By the way, hardware-wise I use a MacBook Pro or an iPad Pro (which I’m typing this article on right now). I’m actually in transit right now so I’m using Southwest Airlines WiFi to write and post this article.

I’m en route to Las Vegas, a four-hour flight, so there’s plenty of time to write. Let’s get right down to it.

The only downside of Southwest is that there are no “extra legroom” seats, so I’m having to prop my iPad Pro up against the seat-back in front of me. The person in front reclined their seat a bit and thankfully did not just shove it back as far as it goes. Still don’t understand people like that, of which one I am not. The flight is completely full. I boarded Group A-45 so most of the choice seats (bulkhead, exit row) were already taken.

Getting onto Southwest Wifi is fairly simple. There’s an SSID (or wireless name) called SouthwestWIFI. You select that and then use your browser to head to any site. I always use Google on traditional HTTP and this usually kicks in the “purchase” screen. Surprisingly the cost is only $8 for this 4-hour trip, where the trip on United, which was just about 5 hours, was $14.99. I think last time Delta cheated me $12.99. So Southwest, you win the price war.

Although you can enter your Rewards number into the purchase screen, you cannot sign in so I’m assuming the cost is $8 per device. Supposedly United allows you to sign–in and switch devices, but as I noted, I was not able to sign in on United’s site.

You’re then presented with a confirmation screen and Southwest immediately emails you a receipt, which is great for business trips. The receipt arrived quickly. You then are brought to a web page that gives you a trip summary and plops you on their home page. At that point, you can toddle off to do your browsing.

Southwest offers an even cheaper version of their WiFi if you only intend to use it for gaming (or via apps). This means you would not be able to Browse to sites, and I’m not sure what it means regarding using Outlook. I’m guessing it will work with Outlook. The cost for this limited WiFi is $4, which is bargain basement. Clearly Southwest is not trying to make a killing on this service.

Texting to my iPhone friends using Message seems to work fine. However, text messaging using SMS does not appear to work (sorry Android!). That needs to be corrected.

The speed overall is good – not blazing – but good. Some sites are slow to load, but most are just fine. I’ve not had to reset my browser nor have I had to ask them to reset their Internet connection.

So, well done, Southwest Airlines! At this point, you’re comparable to Delta and way ahead of United in terms of WiFi. Plus, you’re flight attendants do live up to that “I enjoy my job” tag line you guys do, which makes the flight at least a little more enjoyable.

Should I encounter any issues with the rest of my flight’s WiFi, or on the return flight, I’ll post an update.

willrwills 0 Comments

Sep 6 2016

United Airlines Wifi – Still 50% bad

I hadn’t flown United in nearly a year but decided to opt for in on a non-stop flight to SFO from MCO. For some reason, hopefully not my previous complaints, United had since upgraded me to Silver-Elite, which includes a space-available upgrade to first class. Honestly, though, planes are so overbooked nowadays that your chances of having space in the first-class cabin are slim.

Nonetheless, I booked the flight and had plans to hop on the Internet connection and do office work during the 5-hour flight. Unintelligently, I brought nothing else with me to do. No books, no crosswords.
Once the flight was underway, it became clear that WiFi would again be an issue. The first sign of problems was when I attempted to log in with my United account. This, I was told via the sign-on page, would allow me to swap Internet connectivity between devices. But, it turned out this option was not available. I attempted to sign-on and received an error message (below). They’re sorry for my inconvenience, which as you’ll see later, is a theme at United. Both the sorry part and the inconvenience part.

I was forced to purchase access as a guest, thus presumably losing the ability to switch devices. But as I was to find out, this wouldn’t matter much.

Once online, the connection began to fail. I noticed others who were also having issues. I made my way back to the flight attendants at the rear and asked them whether WiFi was working or not. I was assured it was. As I made my way back to my seat, I did a survey of other passengers and found that their connection was down as well.

So rather than sit down, I made my way to the front of the plane and let that flight attendant know. Apparently, they have to call into the cockpit to have the system reset. The system was reset, but it still didn’t work.

Short version: no Internet for 5 hours and I had to request a refund.

On the way back, I still was not able to log in using my United frequent flyer account, so the second purchase of $14.95 was only for a single device. The connection stayed up this time, but during various points in the trip, it would hang. So I’d lose connectivity for 15 mins and then it would slowly come back. This flight was over the US (not over water), so coverage should have been there.

Finally, unrelated to WiFi, when you purchase meals on United (meal boxes), you don’t get a receipt. You have to go to www.united.com/receipts and request them. So I did, and the first problem I encountered was a weird error message that didn’t make sense (see below).

There’s only one travel date entered and yet it complains that the dates (?) are before the departure date? I had to submit each segment separately.
When my receipts email came, it did not have my meal receipts. It only showed my ticket and seat upgrade monies paid. Great, how do I get receipts for my meals?

After this flight on United, I flew on American from MCO to DFW. That outbound flight had no WiFi (an old 767) so I guess while frustrating and surprising, I could not attempt to use WiFi. On the way back, the plane (a brand new Airbus) had Wi-Fi through Gogo and worked perfectly.

I am just appalled that United continues to use some custom system and eschews Gogo. If Gogo has attempted to negotiate outrageous terms, I’m all for United kicking them to the curb and using option B. But the replacement should at least be as good as Gogo. It’s as if both the actual technology is bad and the site to sign up for it is bad and the web page to request receipts is bad.

Note: I can say that the United iPhone app is actually well designed and easy to use.

But WiFi has become a commodity on planes. Not having it or not having it work should be the exception. How can it be that the few times I fly United, there is always a problem with WiFi? To me, this indicates there is a widespread problem that United needs to address, or they will be losing travelers. Their customer service rating is already in the basement (see link at end of the article).

When I Twitter-messaged United about my recurring WiFi issues, they replied that they were sorry.

By the way, I do not have a vendetta against United. It used to be my favorite airline. But I’m a technology guy and I can’t wrap my head around a large corporation like United just not being able to address core technology issues. Thus now I avoid United. However, I’m happy to return to United and provide technology reports back to them (at regular price, I’m not asking for a discount) as long as they make attempts to identify the root cause and solve the issues once and for all.

I also read that there are newer Earth-to-ground Wi-Fi solutions that might improve the connection for all platforms. I can envision a day when the speed is comparable to ground-based Wi-Fi.

Finally, tomorrow I’ll be on Southwest and will provide a follow-up on my experience there.

willrwills 0 Comments

Dec 1 2015

The Horrors of United Wifi

I truly have only rarely experienced technology issues to the extent that I have while attempting to use United’s Wi-Fi Internet services.
Conservatively, 4 out of the last 5 flights I have taken on United have experienced either no Internet service or impaired service. I have made United aware of the issue and what I received in response was a digital shrug.

As I write this, my fellow business travelers (on United) had no Wifi from Orlando to Houston, and my wife/daughter returning to Orlando from San Francisco (a 4+ hour flight!) have no Internet! It might be somewhat reasonable (but arcane) to not have Wi-Fi on a flight, but to advertise that it has Wi-Fi only to find the system inoperable boils down to fraudulent business practice.

To make matters more irritating, now United actually advertises these in-flight services with snappy commercials that make it look like business executives can continue working in-flight. That may be true on flights that use GoGo Inflight services (literally every other airline but United), but I would consider it false advertising for United.

United is being sued for advertising their inflight movie capabilities when in truth these are only available on the continental US. But let’s get down to the details.

Problem 1 – United Wifi Often Just Does Not Function
And to make matters worse, no one on the flight crew knows how to kick-start it into working. There’s some flaw in the system that happens when the plane lands and converts to local (terminal) power and back. This appears to cause the service to disconnect or hang. Users are presented with a “not available” screen when this is not actually the case.

If you can talk your flight crew into resetting the system, and believe me it takes quite the cajoling, sometimes the system will start working. On one flight I was not able to convince the crew to reset the system. The response I received was that “it’s not possible” or “the cockpit has to do it” or, “oh that never works” or even more amazingly “we’re over an area where there’s no coverage”.

The service just does not work reliably.

Problem 2 – United Wifi Does Not Allow Streaming And Attempts to Guess Which Host Streaming Content
The first part makes sense. Streaming video would quickly bog down the connection, making it a miserable experience for all users. So United smartly does not allow streaming of video on its service.

Part 2 is the problem. It blocks sites that it thinks will stream information. Even ESPN pages that do not have video are blocked because somewhere on ESPN there is streaming video. There must be a list of hostnames that, according to United, have a streaming video somewhere on them, and when you try to visit the site (any part of the site), you are presented with a “sorry” message.

Problem 3 – United Wifi Performance is Terrible
Spotty? Slow? Drops connection inexplicably? Yes, yes, and yes. I know it can be done better because, on other airlines that have Gogo Inflight Wi-Fi, I rarely have issues. Gogo is solid. United Wifi is not.

Problem 4 – Switching Across Multiple Devices
With Gogo, after paying for service, you can log into the service using another device and Gogo will seamlessly slide service to the new device.
Guess what happens with United? It gets confused and has no idea what device you want to switch to. Then it starts prompting you to re-authenticate but then the screen is missing the verification code you are required to enter. What follows shortly is some screenshots from a two-hour effort during a recent United flight from Orlando to San Francisco to get any Wi-Fi reestablished on any of my devices. After paying $6.99 for one hour of service and using my United login, I decided to switch from my Macbook to my iPad. No can do. My daughter unfortunately logged into United Wifi on her iPad using my same id and could not get hers to work on her device either. We could never get the original Wi-Fi service reestablished for the rest of the flight.

I even messed with my network settings, forcing various IP addresses (rather than using DHCP) to try to fool the system to charge me again to at least give me service for what would appear to be a new device. Again, no can do.

In the end, I was never able to get my service reestablished.
Here are some screenshots that are both hilarious and sad –

Screen Shot 1 – Log In Again

This is a result of my attempt to switch service to another device. Does it believe both devices are the same? The error message tells me to log in to get access reestablished. When I logged in, I received a general failure screen that didn’t allow me to proceed. Unfortunately, I don’t have a screenshot of that message.

Screenshot 2 – Enter the Invisible Captcha Code

If you attempt to purchase the service again (in your futile attempt to get some Internet service in place), you are presented with the remarkable screen above. Clicking Continue Mileage Plus Sign In reports the error displayed above that you must enter the verification code. But it’s missing on the page! And you can’t continue without it.

If you then think heck, I’ll log in as a guest, first, it does not explain what a confirmation number is (it’s not required but still…), and then clicking continue as “guest” responds with a generic error message that says there was an error establishing the service – and you’re stuck on that screen. As noted, I was not able to get a screengrab of that screen, unfortunately.
I was able to get to a screen that actually showed a verification code by forcing a URL that included the “/register” page name, but that failed as well.

The Bottom Line

This service is shameful. In a grab for more money by developing their own alternative to Gogo Inflight, United has shown it really does not have the chops to deliver this technology and then falsely advertises how well it works.

I travel on business frequently and I often take United because they usually have the schedule I desire, but more often than not I’ve opted for American (or any other major airline), which has the rock-solid Gogo Inflight service. On my return flight later today from SFO, I will be on United once again and it’s more than likely that the Internet service will fail again. If it does, and I’m able to capture additional screenshots, I will add them to this article. And as noted, both my business partners that are flying out to San Francisco to meet me and my wife & daughter that at returning to Orlando from San Francisco are not able to get United Wifi Internet to function.

Note: I have no affiliation to Gogo and I really have no dislike for United. It used to be my favorite airline and my wife actually was a flight attendant for United a ways back. This has all to do with the frustration of not being able to conduct business while in transit, United’s lack of response on the matter, and their recent advertisements promoting the effectiveness of the service for business travelers. At some point, if the service does not improve, I can smell a lawsuit.

willrwills 5 Comments