United Airlines Finally gets WiFi!
A post from Mr. Travelmista aka Mr Techy's first experience with United's WiFi.
There are some firsts in life you will never forget. Your first kiss. Astronauts landing on the moon the first time. The first telephone call. Right up there with all of those is having WiFi or should I say WiFly on United Airlines. Right up there with building the Great Wall of China! Ok maybe not but wow it took United about as long to get WiFi on their planes. To my surprise while boarding my plane from DCA to ORD, I saw the WiFi logo on the outside of the plane.
Surprisingly, there was no branding or logos inside except for the in seat information sheet.
To connect, turn on your WiFi once in flight and they tell you can use electronic devices. If you do so before hand, the plane will surely succumb to some sort of badness I am told. Maybe someone should let the >40% of people that don't turn off their phones during flight. I made that statistic up but I swear it is pretty high.
Anyway, I digress. Back to my United WiFly virgin experience. Let me tell you, there is nothing that gets your heart racing a bit than seeing United_Wi-Fi on your available wireless access points. Connect before they turn it off!
Once you connect and open a browser, you are automatically connected to the United Portal. The WiFi was $7.99. Not too bad. No clue if it scales with flights that are longer.
The login process even lets you log in using your mileage plus number. Comon 1K discount!
Denied.
It proceeded to ask me for my credit card info and home address. Almost just like a first date!
There were some interesting FAQ presented after like how to get a receipt, what is the cost calculated over, what do I do if I lose my …virginity…I mean Internet connection. You know the usual.
Now to look at the Terms & Conditions. This is important to me. How else are you going to know where this relationship is going? Actually I wanted to see if I could share my net connection with my other devices through a program I use call Connectify. Only thing it indicated was I couldn't share to another passenger. Free love for my iPhone and other devices! This must be like how it was living in the 70's.
Now for a speed test. Is this baby ready to rock and roll?
Going up, fast. Going down, a big no no.
So it is about what you would expect for in flight WiFi. Download speeds are ok and upload speeds are awful.
Flying on United, I'll just happy they finally have WiFi!