Thetownend.com

Has anyone ever used In Flight Wi-Fi?

I'm mainly thinking for Virgin Atlantic, but I'd imagine they're much of a muchness..

I'm travelling to Florida next month and my son would like to know if he can FaceTime/Skype me whilst I'm on the flight. I know there's Wi-Fi available on board (at a cost, which doesn't bother me so much), but I wonder if the signal would be likely to be strong enough to do this?

according to their website..

"Email and message updates on your arrival time, plan the rest of your trip, and get news and sport in real time. Inflight Wifi keeps you in the loop."

"All you need is a flight pass, available for just £14.99 which will give you up to 150MB of data"

I would imagine you would get enough bandwidth for browsing, but it would probably be throttled for video streaming, Skype etc

Only available on 787's at the moment, so depends what you are flying there. I know most of Virgins fleet are 747 to Florida as I flew there last year.

I'd seen the info on their website, but it's not always 'as given' - I didn't know whether anyone on here had actual experience with it, themselves?

Thanks though.

Just looked...the Virgin 787 doesn't fly to Florida at the moment so you won't have wifi at all.

All transatlantic flights out of Gatwick have Wi-Fi on board according my travel documents, so should be ok on that front.

Yep, they've rolled out to the fleet bar A340-600's I think.  It's a limited version suitable for basic online browsing, do not think you'll be streaming anything.

Cool, thanks.

Used it on an Airbus A380, pretty sketchy, I wouldn't rely on it, sadly.

Yeah no probs - Probably save my money.

Ta.