[xiwenc]

KLM, specially on long flights, has a free tier wifi where you can use major instant messaging without charge. If you want to surf the web, it’s pretty cheap. If i recall around 30-40 euro for a 9-10hours flight. Or pay less for an hour.

Was considering to “hack” my way out of the free tier. But paying was just too easy and it’s affordable.

Sorry for boring addition/story.

[dfxm12]

...it’s pretty cheap. If i recall around 30-40 euro for a 9-10hours flight.

I would love to be in a position where I could consider this cheap. FWIW, I pay about €46 per month for Internet service.

[bauruine]

If you pay 1000+ for the flight an additional 40 Euros isn't that bad.

[xiwenc]

With “cheap” i meant it was still affordable. If it was 10x then it would not be affordable. Just like a bottle a water costs more at the airport, internet access costs more on a plane in the sky.

Perhaps i am a bit biased i would expense the bill to the company. A few hours of work definitely pays back the prepaid internet.

As mentioned, a decade or two ago, this was not possible or very limited to the elites. I certainly dont feel or behave like an elite. So it is “affordable” to me

[duronald]

Southwest Airlines offers free IM through iMessage and WhatsApp too. Should be able to tunnel internet traffic through iMessage.

[frankus]

I'm trying to recall the name of the app that does this, but one of the travel-tracking apps uses Apple's push notification system (which the network treats as "messaging") to send e.g. gate changes to subscribing devices through this "messaging only" network.

The APNS payload is a JSON blob that's limited to 4KB, with a few required pieces of information but mostly free-form, so it's definitely in the scope of e.g. a (text-only) blog post split over a few messages.