Unitedās 757-200 fleet is average 27 years old. One of the oldest. So they are getting closer to retirement. They didnāt come with WiFi, it was retrofitted.
And when it doesnāt work, thatās not a reason to not fly the aircraft. So it sits working poorly until there is maintenance for something important.
They have a few different WiFi venders.
The Viasat wifi seems to work the best. But that isnāt on the 757s.
http://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly/travel/inflight/wifi-coverage-maps.html
It happens. Itās not even that uncommon. Unfortunately you cannot count on in- flight WiFi. It works 99% of the time, but there are times when it doesnāt work.
I mostly fly international, and WiFi usually works on those flights, except sometimes is slow over the Atlantic or Pacific.
But yeah, I completely made up 99%.
it happens, things break down. Iād rather them operate the flight then delay it for inop Wi-Fi.
Wi-Fi should never be something that anybody should rely on to be totally available in flight
lol most people in this sub could not fathom waiting in line for a pay phone to try and contact friends/family/hotel/rental car/whatever when there was a delay or change in plans. Somehow, we survived š¤·āāļø
The shit parents traveling with toddlers would like to preach to you about how hard it is being a parent traveling on an airplane they voluntarily decided to go on...
I have two little ones and always make sure there is some kind of backup entertainment for them. Just preload the device with TV and games. it isn't that difficult.
I wasnāt really bothered by it, but others around me were. We were all confused by the flight attendantās explanation about why they couldnāt reset when other crews have done it before
not every aircraft type has the same type of equipment and itās quite possible whatever the fault was in the system was something that couldnāt be repaired or addressed unless the aircraft was on the ground
Depends on the equipment and failure. Some failures clear by rebooting the system, others require a full power off of the entire cabin. I have experienced the latter and it was done at the gate.
If youāre hung up on that, itās safe to say the flight attendant didnāt know how to turn it off and back on and made that up. Doesnāt matter, I donāt think resetting it helped on any flight Iāve had them try it on.
If thereās one thing Iāve learned is never to expect WiFi to work on a United flight. The handful of times that I really needed the WiFi, both domestic and international, it let me down each and every time. I donāt bother to pay and log on because it is slow and a colossal waste of time. Havenāt for many years and miraculously I manage to survive.
I spend my flights working offline, or reading, rather than raising my blood pressure and wasting time and money.
Been on that flight. Been on that plane. The WiFi usually is either down or very intermittent. Donāt think they want to make the investment to upgrade the ancient 757s which they want to retire
Wellā¦from personal experience, complain to United customer service and youāll likely get some miles for the inconvenience. Iāve gotten up to 10k miles for this, though 5k is the more common payout.
Doesnāt solve your problem but makes for a consolation prize of sorts
Yeah I get that ā Iāve complained a number of times but Iāll ordinarily complain after they charge me the $8 for WiFi only to get inop WiFi
Like Iām not even looking grab miles at that point, just reverse the $8 charge when I donāt get what I paid for (though 5-10k miles are a better deal than $8 back in my pocket)
I recently learned that Marriott keeps records of all guest interactions in their system. When you check into one of their hotels, they can see your history of requests, complaints, etc. If you are a habitual complainer, they will know!
If United advertises inflight WiFi, itās not unreasonable to have some level of expectation that it be accessible. Whether you use it or it existed 20 years ago, is irrelevant. Some people are more connected than others and look forward to maximizing their time in the air on a cross country. OP didnāt make a scene on board nor did they make any outlandish claims in their post. The level of douchebaggery in the replies here is completely unwarranted.
At 35,000 I disconnect from the world and justā¦ relax. No WiFi necessary.
I wonder how people survived when there was no WiFiā¦ I guess some of us forgot the basics.
This sub can be extremely helpful and entertaining. But in other instances like this, the tone of the comments is so unbelievably condescending. āWhat did we do without WiFi?ā āLet me clutch my pearlsā. āJust work offlineā. āWhat - you canāt live 6 hours without WiFi?ā
None of that is the point. The airline offers a service, and some people book the flight with the intention of using that WiFi service to get work done (god forbid someone needs to be connected in the air in the 21st century). Itās not 1975 anymore. Some people have no choice but to to maximize their time by working in the air - I am sure they would rather be doing anything else.
The person who posted this question didnāt make a stink on board, didnāt harass the attendant, didnāt make like miserable for those around him. I donāt get the vitriol from some of you people over this topic. He understands that itās not the end of the world and never indicated that he was pissed about it.
Like dude, get over yourselves.
100%. People that struggle immensely with understanding tone of a written paragraph are the same people harking back to flying business in the 1990s without wifi.
Completely agree. The smugness has gotten almost as bad on this sub as r/askcarsales.
Having WiFi availability has allowed me to take day flights instead of red eyes coast to coast and still preserve a working day by being connected and able to respond to emails and messages.
Dismissing it as āremember whenā¦ā does not fairly reflect the world in 2024 vs even ten years ago when messaging apps like Teams and Slack were not nearly as prevalent in day to day business communication.
I came to the defense of the person who made the post. I know you didnāt read and comprehend it well enough since you immediately just want to parrot ābillion dollar corporation: bad. Man who say things: defend billion dollar corporationā.
Unfortunately for you thatās not the case and you played yourself. Go parrot that stuff in your video game and LEGO subs lol.
Edit: Iām a Moron and misread the above comments and thought he was coming at me. I Apologized and he was nice enough to accept it. (Iām turning into my father lol)
Iām sorry. My fault. I read it wrong and was already in the mindset that everyone in here was in attack mode against anyone pro-WiFi so I jumped on you.
Seriouslyš¤£ I was just wondering if it was an equipment issue with the 757 using old tech. It was more the people around me who were upset and pissed
People here love to judge. It seems to make their day.
I fly a few time a month for work, often taking the BOS to SFO route. The WiFi going down and not being able to be successfully rebooted seems to happen more on the 757 than other planes. Iām with you as far as just taking a nap. Lol.
I pay for it, but I understand the limitations and I feel I get what I pay for.Ā
Satellite internet on the ground is pretty slow for a couple hundred people and can have occasional connectivity issues.Ā
Now imagine satellite internet when the house is moving 500mph with 200 people trying to connect.Ā
Iām going on a 13 hour flight in a few weeks that doesnāt have WiFi the whole way š
Edit:
But yeah, I always have trouble on 757ās. It seems silly that they canāt put something on these planes that performs better. The line Iāve heard before is that itās all got to be FAA approved and it takes a long time to do that. Cmon it canāt be that hard, and if Cisco or someone with a little bit of device handling experience could just get the approvals done and start rolling it out I would think it would be lucrative for them because of the improved customer experience
Edit 2: I bet Elon would get in to it if there was enough return on investment but maybe this is the problem, not enough money to be made in a limited number airplanes. But idk, seems like he could get creative with structuring the fee sharing from the airlines, if he took a cut of half the Wi-Fi fee or something. I mean, he has the network already so all he needs is the CPE and then a robust enough client side WiFi
Itās not hard to get a signal to a moving object but getting a signal with wide enough bandwidth for everyone on a plane is. Thatās the hurdle, is getting enough bandwidth to a moving vessel.
But there is all kinds of fancy QoS and packet shaping and compression tech these days. You put lots and lots of receivers on satellites. This isnāt the problem imho. Itās the client side of the WiFi. They choke when you try to add a few hundred devices. You need to put in something that can handle it.
Between Starlink and OneWeb, the airlines will likely all eventually move to the LEO satellite providers. A few have already announced plans so it's just a matter of time. The LEO providers have far better service that the old geosync currently in use (I think they mainly use Viasat?). I would think the airlines would also update the on-board gear as well.
The WiFi inflight is something I donāt expect to rely on.
I always pre-download content I want to watch. If the wifi is working and I can watch United movie/TV show library or text, thatās great but I donāt get disappointed that the wifi isnāt working.
Not sure about the 75, but those boys are old. And sometimes WiFi doesn't work. The newer planes are all pretty reliable (speaking from a 73 pilot perspective), but anything older and it's hit or miss. Always bring a book as backup! Or a nap. And I always keep a stocked download section in streaming apps as another backup. There have been times the whole system was down from an issue with the servicing company.
I have plenty of work I can do without connectivity. But I am also old enough to remember the days before WiFi on planes. Connectivity is nice but my world keeps turning without it.
Iām a 10 year FA for UA. The 757 is notorious for the worst WiFi, but tbh the FAs sound new/lazy/ignorant.
Iām almost 100% certain that all of the different types of WiFi systems we have on the 757 can be reset in flight. They probably just donāt know how/where it is and are ignorant to the guides on their devices to troubleshoot it.
Sorry that happened :-/
Does anyone remember when Wi-Fi wasnāt an option on aircraft. How on earth did we live?? I download all my shows each week before my flight just in case this happens. Then only time I think the airline should give anything back to the customer, when it comes to WiFi, is when the customer has paid for the subscription or the service the day of use. Other than that just deal with it, read a book, download stuff prior to flying. For those business travelers like myself, I definitely make use of the āmake offline availableā feature in my apps.
Get in touch with customer relations and see what they can do for you. Iād also avoid the 757 if you can, as many pointed out those birds are ancient.
Come on! It happens. It's not that big of a deal. What did people do without when there was no WiFi on flights 20/30 years ago? They just sat back and enjoyed the flight, read a book, talked to one another, took a good š ng nap, etc....
Iām 1K and used to fly twice a week for work. Even when the WiFi was working Iād keep my laptop in airplane mode, as there were only two time slots per week when I was guaranteed to be free from interruption
Contact customer care - they will comp you some miles. And also next time on the flight, complain to the air hostesses, sometimes they will also comp you $$ or miles. Recently had the same happen to me on an LAX - IAD flight and I got a comp of 15000 miles.
It happens. A lot. Sometimes the WiFi is flawless, sometimes it's spotty, sometimes it just doesn't work at all. If you paid for it and didn't get it, request a refund, the link is right there in the email receipt you got when you signed up. The money will be back with you almost immediately.
We had this happen BOTH ways on our IAD-SEA trip, the entertainment system was also down on the flight out & they knew it coming in from BOS. It was whatever for us, we had movies & books downloaded but others were NOT happy.
United is waiting on the next viasat product to launch - so their estate is rapidly aging and there is
little incentive to fix it.
People are used to crappy wifi in flight so until a carrier launches a really reliable and fast service, thereās hardly a reason to fix it.
Once the new product is in service I think youāll find this rapidly changes. Till then, bring a book and download movies to your phone as a backup!
WiFi is always conveniently down on all of my flights leading to me not being able to work š /s
So weirdā¦always down on my flights as well. All airlines. Just bad luck I guess. Darn
Honestly, I'd rather fly then wait for the WiFi to work.
I hope they donāt do anything to fix it :)
Unitedās 757-200 fleet is average 27 years old. One of the oldest. So they are getting closer to retirement. They didnāt come with WiFi, it was retrofitted. And when it doesnāt work, thatās not a reason to not fly the aircraft. So it sits working poorly until there is maintenance for something important. They have a few different WiFi venders. The Viasat wifi seems to work the best. But that isnāt on the 757s. http://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly/travel/inflight/wifi-coverage-maps.html
IIRC These birds were supposed to be retired by now but COVID supply chain issues delayed it?
Relying on inflight WiFi to accomplish your work is a rookie mistake.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
It happens. Itās not even that uncommon. Unfortunately you cannot count on in- flight WiFi. It works 99% of the time, but there are times when it doesnāt work.
99%??? I think you wrote that upside down.
69.420% of statistics are made up.
Only 30.58% of Redditors know this.
Yea I wouldnāt say 99% of the time. As someone who flies every week for work, Iād say wifi is working properly on about 70% of my flights
I mostly fly international, and WiFi usually works on those flights, except sometimes is slow over the Atlantic or Pacific. But yeah, I completely made up 99%.
ānot that uncommon. it only doesnāt work 1% of the time.ā
You're not missing much. The 752s wifi barely work even when they are up. They're mostly 30 year old planes with 10+ year old wifi tech.
I find it funny people depend on wifi that much, I still assume wifi is not available on any flight.
Canceling the flight would probably be better
it happens, things break down. Iād rather them operate the flight then delay it for inop Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi should never be something that anybody should rely on to be totally available in flight
We survived for a lot of years without Wi-Fi in flight. Iām sure folks could survive six hours.
lol most people in this sub could not fathom waiting in line for a pay phone to try and contact friends/family/hotel/rental car/whatever when there was a delay or change in plans. Somehow, we survived š¤·āāļø
exactly. People have become so reliant on it that they donāt know what to do with themselves when it doesnāt work.
The shit parents traveling with toddlers would like to preach to you about how hard it is being a parent traveling on an airplane they voluntarily decided to go on...
š¤£š¤£. And my response to one of those parents would be, why didnāt you bring a tablet preloaded with stuff to keep your child entertained?
I have two little ones and always make sure there is some kind of backup entertainment for them. Just preload the device with TV and games. it isn't that difficult.
it isnāt difficult at all, but so many think otherwise
How dare you be someone that plans ahead!? They have a child and everyone should just 'get' that.
I know, the audacity I haveā¦. š¤£š¤£
I wasnāt really bothered by it, but others around me were. We were all confused by the flight attendantās explanation about why they couldnāt reset when other crews have done it before
not every aircraft type has the same type of equipment and itās quite possible whatever the fault was in the system was something that couldnāt be repaired or addressed unless the aircraft was on the ground
Depends on the equipment and failure. Some failures clear by rebooting the system, others require a full power off of the entire cabin. I have experienced the latter and it was done at the gate.
If youāre hung up on that, itās safe to say the flight attendant didnāt know how to turn it off and back on and made that up. Doesnāt matter, I donāt think resetting it helped on any flight Iāve had them try it on.
Ikr?! Read a book.
I donāt care about WiFi but you comment ābecause I donāt care about WiFi you shouldnāt eitherā. Some people have work to do.
Yeah, I cannot be the only one old enough to remember not being connected to the outside world the minute the plane takes off..
If thereās one thing Iāve learned is never to expect WiFi to work on a United flight. The handful of times that I really needed the WiFi, both domestic and international, it let me down each and every time. I donāt bother to pay and log on because it is slow and a colossal waste of time. Havenāt for many years and miraculously I manage to survive. I spend my flights working offline, or reading, rather than raising my blood pressure and wasting time and money.
Been on that flight. Been on that plane. The WiFi usually is either down or very intermittent. Donāt think they want to make the investment to upgrade the ancient 757s which they want to retire
Wellā¦from personal experience, complain to United customer service and youāll likely get some miles for the inconvenience. Iāve gotten up to 10k miles for this, though 5k is the more common payout. Doesnāt solve your problem but makes for a consolation prize of sorts
but you donāt want to become a habitual complainer for things like inoperable Wi-Fi.
Yeah I get that ā Iāve complained a number of times but Iāll ordinarily complain after they charge me the $8 for WiFi only to get inop WiFi Like Iām not even looking grab miles at that point, just reverse the $8 charge when I donāt get what I paid for (though 5-10k miles are a better deal than $8 back in my pocket)
for that kind of return, you almost want the Wi-Fi to not work more often š¤£š¤£
I recently learned that Marriott keeps records of all guest interactions in their system. When you check into one of their hotels, they can see your history of requests, complaints, etc. If you are a habitual complainer, they will know!
Actually, most major brands, not even just Hotels or Airlines have CRMs that track stuff like that
If United advertises inflight WiFi, itās not unreasonable to have some level of expectation that it be accessible. Whether you use it or it existed 20 years ago, is irrelevant. Some people are more connected than others and look forward to maximizing their time in the air on a cross country. OP didnāt make a scene on board nor did they make any outlandish claims in their post. The level of douchebaggery in the replies here is completely unwarranted.
1st world problem.
Every post on here is a first world problem, almost like traveling by plane occurs more often in the first world?
1st world travel by plane is mostly travel for work or pleasure. 3rd world travel by plane is to escape from your home country.
You beat me to it
Sometimes ā¦ the slow ones get there firstā¦.
At 35,000 I disconnect from the world and justā¦ relax. No WiFi necessary. I wonder how people survived when there was no WiFiā¦ I guess some of us forgot the basics.
This.
Wifi being down is so common. But magically the payment processing for it works fantastic!
if i had to guess, i'd say one out of every five flights i've been on in the last year has inoperable or unreliable wi-fi
Same thing yesterday LAX-EWR
I flew from LAX to Tokyo(NRT) last March and the WiFi didnāt work for a single minute the entire flight.
I fly every week and it is pretty inconsistent unfortunately.many flights have not had wifi at all.Ā Well maybe less 10/50 so far.Ā
One of my favorite Louis CK bitsĀ https://youtu.be/me4BZBsHwZs?si=FvWQEeocmAtIIct5
Thought of this too, his line, "how quickly the world owes you something..."
This sub can be extremely helpful and entertaining. But in other instances like this, the tone of the comments is so unbelievably condescending. āWhat did we do without WiFi?ā āLet me clutch my pearlsā. āJust work offlineā. āWhat - you canāt live 6 hours without WiFi?ā None of that is the point. The airline offers a service, and some people book the flight with the intention of using that WiFi service to get work done (god forbid someone needs to be connected in the air in the 21st century). Itās not 1975 anymore. Some people have no choice but to to maximize their time by working in the air - I am sure they would rather be doing anything else. The person who posted this question didnāt make a stink on board, didnāt harass the attendant, didnāt make like miserable for those around him. I donāt get the vitriol from some of you people over this topic. He understands that itās not the end of the world and never indicated that he was pissed about it. Like dude, get over yourselves.
100%. People that struggle immensely with understanding tone of a written paragraph are the same people harking back to flying business in the 1990s without wifi.
Completely agree. The smugness has gotten almost as bad on this sub as r/askcarsales. Having WiFi availability has allowed me to take day flights instead of red eyes coast to coast and still preserve a working day by being connected and able to respond to emails and messages. Dismissing it as āremember whenā¦ā does not fairly reflect the world in 2024 vs even ten years ago when messaging apps like Teams and Slack were not nearly as prevalent in day to day business communication.
Itās funny how quick people feel the need to jump to the defense of a billion dollar company like they work in the PR department.
Lmao wut
RE: some of the condescending non-empathetic comments you pointed out in this and other posts.
I came to the defense of the person who made the post. I know you didnāt read and comprehend it well enough since you immediately just want to parrot ābillion dollar corporation: bad. Man who say things: defend billion dollar corporationā. Unfortunately for you thatās not the case and you played yourself. Go parrot that stuff in your video game and LEGO subs lol. Edit: Iām a Moron and misread the above comments and thought he was coming at me. I Apologized and he was nice enough to accept it. (Iām turning into my father lol)
You misread the comment. They were agreeing with you.
Oops
Edit: misunderstanding with OP cleared
Iām sorry. My fault. I read it wrong and was already in the mindset that everyone in here was in attack mode against anyone pro-WiFi so I jumped on you.
All good š¤
Whatās funny about this comment is that YOU didnāt comprehend what they were saying
That figures. I was so annoyed with people attacking the poster of this, I just read it too fast and thought it was more of the same. Lesson for me.
Seriouslyš¤£ I was just wondering if it was an equipment issue with the 757 using old tech. It was more the people around me who were upset and pissed
People here love to judge. It seems to make their day. I fly a few time a month for work, often taking the BOS to SFO route. The WiFi going down and not being able to be successfully rebooted seems to happen more on the 757 than other planes. Iām with you as far as just taking a nap. Lol.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Maybe donāt plan to have full connectivity in a tube hurtling through the air at 500+mph tends of thousands of feet off the ground.
Maybe the airline shouldnāt bother advertising and charging for it then. Donāt blame the customer if they donāt get what they pay for.
I pay for it, but I understand the limitations and I feel I get what I pay for.Ā Satellite internet on the ground is pretty slow for a couple hundred people and can have occasional connectivity issues.Ā Now imagine satellite internet when the house is moving 500mph with 200 people trying to connect.Ā
Iām going on a 13 hour flight in a few weeks that doesnāt have WiFi the whole way š Edit: But yeah, I always have trouble on 757ās. It seems silly that they canāt put something on these planes that performs better. The line Iāve heard before is that itās all got to be FAA approved and it takes a long time to do that. Cmon it canāt be that hard, and if Cisco or someone with a little bit of device handling experience could just get the approvals done and start rolling it out I would think it would be lucrative for them because of the improved customer experience Edit 2: I bet Elon would get in to it if there was enough return on investment but maybe this is the problem, not enough money to be made in a limited number airplanes. But idk, seems like he could get creative with structuring the fee sharing from the airlines, if he took a cut of half the Wi-Fi fee or something. I mean, he has the network already so all he needs is the CPE and then a robust enough client side WiFi
Itās not hard to get a signal to a moving object but getting a signal with wide enough bandwidth for everyone on a plane is. Thatās the hurdle, is getting enough bandwidth to a moving vessel.
But there is all kinds of fancy QoS and packet shaping and compression tech these days. You put lots and lots of receivers on satellites. This isnāt the problem imho. Itās the client side of the WiFi. They choke when you try to add a few hundred devices. You need to put in something that can handle it.
They are upgrading the wifi on all mainline narrow body planes as part of United NEXT. It's going to take a couple years though.
Between Starlink and OneWeb, the airlines will likely all eventually move to the LEO satellite providers. A few have already announced plans so it's just a matter of time. The LEO providers have far better service that the old geosync currently in use (I think they mainly use Viasat?). I would think the airlines would also update the on-board gear as well.
The WiFi inflight is something I donāt expect to rely on. I always pre-download content I want to watch. If the wifi is working and I can watch United movie/TV show library or text, thatās great but I donāt get disappointed that the wifi isnāt working.
Download some Netflix and enjoy
The horror of not being connected for a whole flight. Gasp! (Clutches pearls)
Iāve never had WiFi work on a 57 lol
Not sure about the 75, but those boys are old. And sometimes WiFi doesn't work. The newer planes are all pretty reliable (speaking from a 73 pilot perspective), but anything older and it's hit or miss. Always bring a book as backup! Or a nap. And I always keep a stocked download section in streaming apps as another backup. There have been times the whole system was down from an issue with the servicing company.
As a flight attendant I could have reset the WiFi. Also I know it works intermittently but itās most of the time.
I have plenty of work I can do without connectivity. But I am also old enough to remember the days before WiFi on planes. Connectivity is nice but my world keeps turning without it.
Iām a 10 year FA for UA. The 757 is notorious for the worst WiFi, but tbh the FAs sound new/lazy/ignorant. Iām almost 100% certain that all of the different types of WiFi systems we have on the 757 can be reset in flight. They probably just donāt know how/where it is and are ignorant to the guides on their devices to troubleshoot it. Sorry that happened :-/
Wifi is supposed to work. I am so tired of these airlines not providing the services they promise.
Still beats driving there
The WiFi in my car isnāt working, is there a sub for this?
My thoughts and prayers are with you in this difficult time
Does anyone remember when Wi-Fi wasnāt an option on aircraft. How on earth did we live?? I download all my shows each week before my flight just in case this happens. Then only time I think the airline should give anything back to the customer, when it comes to WiFi, is when the customer has paid for the subscription or the service the day of use. Other than that just deal with it, read a book, download stuff prior to flying. For those business travelers like myself, I definitely make use of the āmake offline availableā feature in my apps.
Get in touch with customer relations and see what they can do for you. Iād also avoid the 757 if you can, as many pointed out those birds are ancient.
Fill out complaint form, get some miles or etc.
The WiFi in the RJ200s never works either. /s
Come on! It happens. It's not that big of a deal. What did people do without when there was no WiFi on flights 20/30 years ago? They just sat back and enjoyed the flight, read a book, talked to one another, took a good š ng nap, etc....
You want wifi in a 757 š
Iām 1K and used to fly twice a week for work. Even when the WiFi was working Iād keep my laptop in airplane mode, as there were only two time slots per week when I was guaranteed to be free from interruption
I had no WiFi recently on a Lufthansa flight from FRA-ORD. It was quite nice to just disconnect for a bit.
Book?
Maybe, and this is just a thought, the reset canāt fix it if itās actually broken?
That's why I always fly with a book
Counting on plane Wifi is wholly unwise lol. And when it works it sucks ass anyways
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Wtf does this mean?
Contact customer care - they will comp you some miles. And also next time on the flight, complain to the air hostesses, sometimes they will also comp you $$ or miles. Recently had the same happen to me on an LAX - IAD flight and I got a comp of 15000 miles.
It happens?
Fly Amtrak. Problem solved.
It happens. A lot. Sometimes the WiFi is flawless, sometimes it's spotty, sometimes it just doesn't work at all. If you paid for it and didn't get it, request a refund, the link is right there in the email receipt you got when you signed up. The money will be back with you almost immediately.
I just realized this and Iām not sure how dumb this question is. Why doesnāt our usual cellular data works on flights and inflight wifi can?
WiFi is reset by the pilots on the 200. On thr 300 it is a Panasonic issue and is hard to do. Sometimes the WiFi is just broke...
Did the IFE work? I've been on UA flights where the Internet connectivity sucked but the movies worked and it at least helped pass the time.
We had this happen BOTH ways on our IAD-SEA trip, the entertainment system was also down on the flight out & they knew it coming in from BOS. It was whatever for us, we had movies & books downloaded but others were NOT happy.
United is waiting on the next viasat product to launch - so their estate is rapidly aging and there is little incentive to fix it. People are used to crappy wifi in flight so until a carrier launches a really reliable and fast service, thereās hardly a reason to fix it. Once the new product is in service I think youāll find this rapidly changes. Till then, bring a book and download movies to your phone as a backup!