On Board WiFi

According to sources VS are trialling on board WiFi on three Ac - anybody out there know which ones?

According to sources VA are trialling on board WiFi on three Ac - anybody out there know which ones?

Definitely G-VINE (Champagne Belle)

I believe it's these A333s:

G-VLUV
G-VGEM
G-VINE

I have used it on three flights. I haven't found the speed too bad (but nowhere near as good as Gogo on DL/VX etc).

The pricing, however, is high - and not consistent (I believe by design, as part of the trial is to assess what passengers will pay).

Thanks for the info. All based at LHR. Don't think I'd want to pay much for it anyway, what I need to do online can always wait.

[mitchja]

The A333's now cover both LHR and LGW routes.

All the A333's and the LGW/MAN 744's also have AeroMobile which may work out cheaper. You only get Edge data connection speeds but's it's good enough for basic usage.

FWIW, I used the Wi-Fi service on an A330 aircraft flying from IAD to LHR on the 30th of November. I'd been looking forward to trying the Wi-Fi service for many months, but had never before been on an aircraft with the service installed.

I found the service to be so slow as to be virtually unusable, even for the relatively non-data-intensive task of checking email (over IMAP). I tried checking my email at least ten times, and more than half of the attempts failed outright for lack of a response from the mail server before a (long) timeout interval. The problem definitely appeared to be the speed of the link between the aircraft and the rest of the Internet; the Wi-Fi link to the access point on the aircraft worked well, as evidenced by pages served by the access point itself (e.g., the "splash page" advertising the Wi-Fi service) loading quickly.

There are many reasons the service could appear slow and unreliable, from there being heavy concurrent use by other users, to there being something wrong with this particular aircraft's Internet link, to there being fundamental limits on the capacity and/or reliability of the Internet link provided by the system installed in the aircraft.

I may try it again on another flight if I get an aircraft equipped with the system, just to gather another data point. But if my experience is similar the next time around, I won't be willing to spend any further money in the hope that the service improves.

VS, if you're reading, I'd be happy to discuss my experience further.

[mitchja]

It's never going to be particularly fast with it been a shared satellite based service.

International airlines cannot use the same system as the faster ground to air type system VX and other US airlines use. That system basically has masts on the ground (similar to mobile masts/cell towers) in the US but with transmitters pointing up towards the aircraft.

3G (and 4G) cellular services has been given the go-ahead recently onboard UK aircraft, so that should speed things up in the future once airlines upgrade their on-board equipment.

I've used the AeroMobile system and whilst it's only 2G/EDGE speeds, it was adequate for email, Facebook and surfing the net etc. As the AeroMobile uplink is also based in Norway, you only get charged the Euro rate for roaming data. The Three 'at home' system might even make this free now for some people if Norway is in the list of countries supported possibly?

It's never going to be particularly fast with it been a shared satellite based service.

International airlines cannot use the same system as the faster ground to air type system VX and other US airlines use. That system basically has masts on the ground (similar to mobile masts/cell towers) in the US but with transmitters pointing up towards the aircraft.

I never intended to imply that I expected the satellite-based service on a VS long-haul flight to perform as well as the cellular air-to-ground service available on US domestic overland flights.

In fact, I was setting a low bar for the speed I expected--I merely wanted to be able to retrieve new email over IMAP reliably within, say, minutes. My point in my previous posting was that even with that low performance goal, and with a plenty fast Wi-Fi link within the aircraft that would not be the bottleneck (even if shared by dozens of users), I was unable to reliably check email over the service as offered on my flight on a VS A330. My conclusion is that either the satellite service VS is purchasing is severely capacity-limited (even to a point that one cannot reliably complete an IMAP fetch of new email headers before the IMAP client times out utterly), or was not working properly on my aircraft on the day I tried it.

(For what it's worth, I'm a computer scientist, and do research on wireless system design, including on techniques for improving capacity. I am familiar with the differences between terrestrial and satellite wireless systems.)

3G (and 4G) cellular services has been given the go-ahead recently onboard UK aircraft, so that should speed things up in the future once airlines upgrade their on-board equipment.

I take it you mean speed up the link between the device and the aircraft. The satellite link between aircraft and Internet will of course remain unchanged. And my negative experience was using Wi-Fi on board, which ought to be fast enough so as not to be the bottleneck, given how capacity-constrained the satellite link is by comparison. (Granted, for 3G/4G users, a faster link to the aircraft would speed up access to static, cacheable, shared content, like frequently accessed web sites. But not to unshared content, like individual users' email, of course.)

I've used the AeroMobile system and whilst it's only 2G/EDGE speeds, it was adequate for email, Facebook and surfing the net etc. As the AeroMobile uplink is also based in Norway, you only get charged the Euro rate for roaming data. The Three 'at home' system might even make this free now for some people if Norway is in the list of countries supported possibly?

From what I've read, I believe the satellite uplink is identical in the system you used and the one I used--I think they are in fact both AeroMobile systems from aircraft to satellite, the only difference being the first-hop link from client device to the aircraft (2G/EDGE for you, Wi-Fi for me).

(EDIT: it turns out that the Wi-Fi system is made by ARINC, whereas the 2G/EDGE one is AeroMobile's offering, but both systems use L band!)

That leaves me curious as to why I couldn't retrieve email and you could, especially given that I observed the Wi-Fi link to the aircraft to perform very well (given the fast page load times for service sign-up pages that were served from a server on board the aircraft).

Perhaps there was indeed something wrong with ARINC on the day I flew and aircraft I flew in, but AeroMobile was working correctly for you on your aircraft and day.

-Brad

A couple other thoughts on AeroMobile service on VS:

It appears that AeroMobile offers two sorts of satellite links from aircraft: one on the L band and one on the Ku band. AeroMobile partners with Panasonic, which markets its aircraft-to-satellite systems under the name "eXConnect." eXConnect comes in L band and Ku band versions, and an aircraft is fitted with hardware for one or other.

The L band service is provided by Inmarsat under the product name "SwiftBroadband". This service is 432 Kbps per channel, and one aircraft can be provisioned with up to two such channels. I've read claims that in practice, total capacity achieved with two channels is around 600 Kbps. Not so fast, especially if you imagine this capacity not for voice calls, but for data use by, say, even a dozen users on a flight.

The Ku band service is provided by Inmarsat and other providers, apparently including Panasonic. This service is only just starting to be rolled out on aircraft (i.e., the Ku band hardware is only just starting to be installed on aircraft), but promises up to 50 Mbps to a single aircraft.

I've found at least one press release that indicates that VS's system is the L band SwiftBroadband. Let's hope VS upgrades to the Ku band service!

-Brad

The most thorough outline I have seen is here: http://blog.apex.aero/ife/arinc-eyes-ca ... rial-ends/

It appears to be a single channel L band - in light of that, I am surprised by the pretty positive experiences I have had.

I recently did a round trip LHR-DXB-LHR onboard G-VGBR / Golden Girl both ways. Despite the announcements that inflight wifi would be available, my iPhone was having none of it. I turned data roaming to ON & disabled flight safe mode and the phone did not sniff out any networks. Even tried turning flight safe mode on/off and a complete shutdown of the iPhone - still nothing.

No huge loss for me, as only wanted to text a friend in Dubai to say "we're on our way" - but does raise questions as to the reliability of the service. A LHR-DXB flight is not going to be outside of satellite coverage.

I recently did a round trip LHR-DXB-LHR onboard G-VGBR / Golden Girl both ways. Despite the announcements that inflight wifi would be available, my iPhone was having none of it. I turned data roaming to ON & disabled flight safe mode and the phone did not sniff out any networks. Even tried turning flight safe mode on/off and a complete shutdown of the iPhone - still nothing.

No huge loss for me, as only wanted to text a friend in Dubai to say "we're on our way" - but does raise questions as to the reliability of the service. A LHR-DXB flight is not going to be outside of satellite coverage.

Not sure if you made a typo when you mention WiFi but data roaming etc doesn't have anything to do with WiFi, you would just have to make sure your wireless was turned on. Even so, you wouldn't be able to text, call etc as you would need connection to a mobile phone service rather than WiFi to do that.

There are two separate services - 'AeroMobile' which VS are using to refer to the ability to roam onto a mobile phone network to make calls and texts through your phone, charged at your carrier's roaming charges. And then there is WiFi which allows you to connect any device - phone, tablet, laptop etc to a wireless network to access the internet upon paying a fee.

I tried it out on a flight from London to Newark. I found simplistic websites worked ok but most apps on my ipad just would not work at all. I won't purchase it again.