In-flight Technology

I recently had the opportunity to take a relatively long international flight after not having flown for a bit. My flight was with United Airlines, and it offered a number of features. While nothing overly new it was the first time I got to experience most of them.

One of the best experiences for me was the in-flight entertainment system. It offered an impressive number of recent movies along with on-demand shows. The touchscreen-based system worked very well on one of my flights, but the screen was not very sensitive on the other flight, which is ok for movies, but difficult if to want to play games on it. There were also a number of people with faulty systems on my flight. Unfortunately, the flight attendants were unable to fix it for them, but they offered them some money or frequent flyer miles for their inconvenience. It would still be a long boring flight without them if you were counting on them for your entertainment.

The flight was also equipped with WiFi. It was quite expensive, but a nice thing to offer. It is very useful if you need to access your email or grab a file. I purchased a 1-hour pass for $5.99. It was limited though so you couldn't stream music or video and you couldn't access WiFi calling. This prevents my phone from even being able to send texts, although WhatsApp and iMessage still worked for messages.

If you need to power up any of your devices the flight also had a standard US outlet as well as a USB port at every seat so you could power up all of your devices while you fly. This was nice because it allows you to land with your phone fully charged.

There is still a long way they could go, but I am very impressed with where the technology has gotten. The best features are still limited to longer flights, my connecting flights had almost no tech features. We are almost at the point where you can stay completely connected even while flying.

Learn the travel essentials I would never leave home without here.