Delta Air Lines to roll out free wi-fi | Hacker News Reader

Delta Air Lines to roll out free wi-fi

wsj.com

Non-JS Readable Version [1]

Thanks!

The article mentions Delta positioning itself "as a more high-end airline with premium features that can attract higher-paying leisure and business travelers".

Aren't those the customers less likely to quibble over paid wi-fi?

When I was flying for business (almost exclusively Delta), I would pay for the wi-fi every single flight. And I never thought twice, because I was expensing it.

At worst, I thought it was tacky for Delta to nickel-and-dime me (well, the client, actually). The only time it would matter to me personally, is when I was flying for pleasure, on my own dime.

High-end not necessarily means everything has to be purchased, they could increase the ticket price to cover the cost, but a non-payment required Wi-Fi improves the user experience so it makes it feel more “Premium”.

I have a Gogo account with passes in it, it is such a big hassle - every time I have to wait for the captive portal pop up and log in, sometimes it just doesn’t pop up and redirect and I have to scratch my hair looking for ways to fix it. Worse than that, if I would like to keep my phone and Laptop both connected, the plan will automatically kick the other one offline. I flew JetBlue only once in the past few years, even though I don’t quite like other parts of the flight, the free fast Wi-Fi was quite impressive and I even streamed a video during the red eye.

> And I never thought twice, because I was expensing it.

Probably more than 50% of Delta customers can't expense the cost. Travel is an obvious cost cutting center for most companies.

> To access the free service, Delta passengers are expected to need to enter their SkyMiles loyalty number, people familiar with the matter said.

Seems like a fair trade to me

Considering joining the loyalty programs is free, I think it is a great trade.

Even United offers Internet at $8 for "members" and $10 for non-members, when it just requires you to sign up before hand (and since miles now don't ever expire, it is a pretty decent deal even if you accumulate slowly).

It neatly binds all your entire unencrypted traffic including DNS with a profile which already includes travel history, credit history, has been passed through the TSA, etc.

That's worth more than $8 to them for sure...

Delta flights I've taken this year have had cheap but terrible wifi that was insufficient to use for work. I assume the free wifi offering will be similar.

As others mentioned, Delta is flying a mixed fleet where some planes have better WiFi than others. Additionally, there are delta-branded non-delta-managed flights and I’ve found those have bad WiFi too.

So it definitely “could be you” except that doesn’t really matter since if all you have available on your routes is trash, free trash is still trash.

the old wifi (Gogo Inflight) is slow and terrible. The new wifi being rolled out (ViaSat) is better, the speedtest screenshots I've seen have been 50-150 Mbps down.

But they will still prevent youtube videos. Once you put 150 people on a flight with, that bandwidth will be expected to drop significantly.

Is this changing with the free WiFi rollout? I was on a flight very recently with updated Viasat Wifi and was able to stream YouTube.

Is the quality bad because the airlines just don't care when the Wi-Fi signal gets hugged to death or because it's hard to offer a stable connection at those altitudes? I fly with Spirit a couple of times a month and tried their $6 Wi-Fi service which straight up never worked both times.

Free wifi seems like a no brainer to me for the same reason that they put mirrors in elevators: keeping people occupied gives them the illusion that it is a faster, more enjoyable experience than they otherwise would. It’s relatively inexpensive and you can get away with all manner of cramming and squeezing otherwise which will have a bigger impact on margins.

In NYC, a mirror is required in an apartment elevator so that it "will enable persons prior to entering into such elevator to view the inside thereof to determine whether any person is in such elevator."

Interesting. I have yet to be in an elevator so cavernous that I would need mirrors to see what might be hiding in the corners! Given the number of places in society where mirrors could help with this, elevators would be far down that list to mandate for me.

Here’s a (definitely not definitive) source on what I said re the original installation of mirrors in elevators: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-lifts-elevators-have-mirrors

So I lived in a building that had a small elevator and a tiny, virtually useless, mirror just to abide by regulations.

Even though is was a small elevator, it was easy to walk in without noticing someone was already in there. The bigger mirrors you normally see would have prevented that.

I don't know the rational for this regulation, but my guess it's either for safety, or to ease the flow of people in & out of elevators.

Interesting! I'd never thought about that, but it does make sense.

Wi-Fi itself isn't much matter, but usable backhaul network is matter.

Oh great, now I get to sit next to someone in a Zoom meeting for 2 hours.

I hate almost everything about air travel, but to me one "perk" is the fact I'm unplugged from the internet for a few hours. I am really not looking forward to the time when the person sitting next to me is on a phone call and chatting extra loud because they're on a plane.

Well taking video calls has never been allowed and WiFi has already been available for a nominal fee so you likely won’t see anything change.

Meanwhile Europe is legalizing phone calls on flights for real, so you have that to look forward to.

Video calls are not allowed on planes, but I share your sentiment. Hope it remains that way.

The most obvious reason to allow free wifi in airports and on planes has always been a security measure to me: more than video surveillance capture of potential bad guys, but devices/mac addresses as well.

"Thank you for your continued loyalty! We will no longer let you into Delta lounges but here's free Wi-Fi!"

(moved on to JetBlue and never looked back)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com