Getting (and staying) online while flying has gotten way better over the years, but at the end of the day, you’re still trying to connect to the planet while you're 30,000 feet above it. In other words, it's still going to be a bit of a hassle—but there are things you can do to make it easier. With that in mind, here are some of the best in-flight wifi tricks and hacks.
Even if you get in-flight wifi, it’s going to be slower than what you would have at home or at the airport. You’re not going to be able to stream 4K, high bit-rate video from Netflix—and even if you managed it, you’d probably end up ruining the connection for everyone else.
For movies, shows, or playlists you know you’ll want to have access to on your flight, it’s best to download them ahead of time. Most streaming services have a method to download episodes of shows for local viewing while you’re offline. You can also load video or music files on your phone directly, if you have local copies on your computer or other device.
Store important documents and apps locally
Many applications will work while offline or with limited internet access, even if they’re normally online web apps. For example, Google Docs can work offline if you head to Google Drive and go to Settings > General > Offline and enable the checkbox to work offline. From there, make sure the specific documents you want to edit are downloaded locally.
This process will be different for other applications, so check the specifics of the apps you use on a regular basis. Many productivity tools have some version of airplane mode access, so even if you lose connection to the internet, you can still keep working.
For some jobs, you need to constantly stay online—or at least seem that way. While your mileage will vary depending on your industry, you can fudge it a bit by scheduling your emails or social media posts to go up while you’re in the air. After all, waiting an hour to respond to an email from your boss can be more acceptable than waiting four.
Most email apps have a tool to schedule your replies, but so do communication apps like Slack. If you spend a lot of time posting to social media, tools like Buffer can help you space out your posts so you don’t end up leaving gaps.
Use your rewards account to get free wifi
Airlines might be pinching every penny to get by, but on some airlines, you can still get free wifi—as long as you sign up for their rewards programs. Airlines like Delta and JetBlue offer free in-flight wifi on a number of flights if you log in with your SkyMiles or TrueBlue accounts.
Other airlines like Southwest offer complimentary wifi due to sponsorships from cell carriers like T-Mobile (even if you don’t use T-Mobile for your phone service). Once again, though, you’ll likely need to sign in with your airline rewards account to make use of the perk.
Even if an airline doesn’t offer complimentary wifi, you can sometimes still get it for free through your credit card company. Many credit card providers will either offer discounts on certain airlines’ internet access, or reimbursements after the fact.
You’ll typically see these listed as travel credits or “airline incidentals” credits, but some credit cards offer an annual allotment of fees you can get reimbursed for. In some cases, credit card companies will only reimburse you for fees from certain airlines, but in others it will apply to general travel fees. It’s worth checking your credit card’s perks before booking your travel to see which airlines you might get credit for.
Use free messaging workarounds to access the internet
Some airlines will offer free internet access, but only for messaging or other extremely limited services. That might be sufficient for your needs, but occasionally you can also leverage that for broader access than the airline intended.
For example, some users have reported that you can access the Gemini service via the Messages app on Android to do broad searches that all get funneled through a single chat interface, without paying an extra fee. Others have claimed you can use a VPN while connected to a messaging-only network connection to open up full internet access. This will vary based on airline and the types of connections they offer, but it’s worth giving it a shot if you don’t want to shell out for full internet access.
If you do get in-flight access to wifi, it’s still probably going to be pretty speed-limited. You can make watching things easier on yourself by manually dropping your streaming speed where you can.
Sites like YouTube offer tools to limit how much bandwidth you use. On any given YouTube video, click the gear icon and choose Quality to select a lower resolution. Depending on the quality, you might not even notice that much of a hit, but still get better playback and, most importantly, fewer interruptions on other browsing while you do it. Check the other sites you use for similar features.
Limit bandwidth in your browser directly
If you’re struggling to get solid performance with the site-specific tools, you can use speed throttling at the browser level to moderate your bandwidth and make things smoother for everything else.
For example, in Chrome, you can open up dev tools (F12 on Windows, Option+Cmd+I on Mac), then select Network. On this tab, you can click “No throttling” and instead choose a more limited option. This is usually designed to mimic slower internet connections for dev purposes, but throttling your own connection here can force more bandwidth-hungry services like Netflix to chill out, freeing up the plane’s limited bandwidth for everything else you’re doing.
You can also save some bandwidth by utilizing lower-lift modes like Reading mode to just pull the parts of the article you actually need. In Chrome, you can enable this quickly by pressing Alt+Shift+R.
Additionally, you can use ad blocker extensions to cut down on loading unnecessary data. This does mean that, if you use Chrome, it might be a bit of a headache. Whether you choose to use a different browser or live with the versions of ad blocking extensions that work today is up to you.
Protect your data when using in-flight wifi
In-flight wifi is still public wifi, so you should treat it like you’re connecting to any given Starbucks network. At this point, any website that isn’t already using HTTPS should be a little suspect, but even then, that’s not necessarily enough. For any work that’s particularly sensitive, you should enable a VPN to protect your data.
Beyond that, it’s a good idea to make sure you have updated antivirus software running, and use tools like UBlock Origin to block any data tracking. There isn’t much about connecting to in-flight wifi that’s different from any other public network, from a security perspective, but you should still take care to protect your data on any public network to begin with.
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