Why did I spend €50 on inflight Wi-Fi from Sydney to London?

When you are travelling, you will sometimes purchase items you would not necessarily buy at home. One of those things is inflight Wi-Fi, which various airlines offer these days.

Paying for Internet access anywhere except your own home is very on the nose. I haven’t paid for online access in an Internet Café in many years and I even look down upon restaurants who don’t have it available. It’s just so ubiquitous.

Inflight Wi-Fi

Recently I flew from Sydney to London and for the uninitiated, this is a flight of a little over 7 hours to Singapore, followed by 13-odd hours to London. In the middle, you have 90 minutes on the ground.

Unlike Aer Lingus, which offers Wi-Fi for free for their business class passengers, you have to pay for it on British Airways. I’ve recently realised I have memorised my credit card number and for better or worse it was inflight Wi-Fi for me. I didn’t even have to retrieve my wallet!

In fact, I ended up paying for it three times. First, I decided I only wanted it for a short period on the flight to Singapore. When that ran out, I bought some more to last the rest of the flight.

After the stopover, I bought a full flight pass for the rest of the way. It’s handy being able to send messages, check social media and generally do something other than watching movies on the airline’s entertainment system. When you’re going to be travelling for 24 hours straight, anything to break it up is worth it.

Overall Thoughts

I’m a fan of the inflight Wi-Fi, when it’s working. Luckily most of the Australia to London journey via Asia seems to have great coverage, and I was able to use it throughout the flight. It’s always rather annoying when you’re flying and it stops working, especially when you’ve paid for it.

The service is getting much better as time passes, which is only fair, I guess. I remember the first time I ever used it and it was hideously slow, but the novelty of being online from the sky made it worthwhile. It still is, really! I’m just glad they ban any kind of voice calling.

What do you think of inflight Wi-Fi? Vital service or no big deal? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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