A Story About Bypassing Air Canada's In-Flight Network Restrictions

Re:A Story About Bypassing Air Canada's In-Flight Network Re... by mjr00 on Friday October 10, 2025 @11:28AM (#45540113)

Yeah, I just flew WestJet from Canada to Honolulu and was amazed; full 1080p YouTube with no hiccups and I was able to play some (non-latency sensitive) online games, all over the Pacific. This was fully intentional; there wasn't any back-of-the-seat iPad for watching movies or anything, they straight up tell you to use your own device and watch Netflix. I did some research after and found a lot of airlines in NA are going to be rolling out satellite internet in the next year or two.

For some reason, being fully connected at 50mbps+ on a plane seems more futuristic sci-fi to me than everything AI.

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Re:A Story About Bypassing Air Canada's In-Flight Network Re... by badc0ffee on Friday October 10, 2025 @11:42AM (#45540245)

> This was fully intentional; there wasn't any back-of-the-seat iPad for watching movies or anything, they straight up tell you to use your own device and watch Netflix.

Westjet has required you to use your own device for a long time now (10 years?), but they offer an app/website and streaming library that works for anyone who connects to the in-plane wifi, unrelated to actual access to the internet.

Interesting that they're telling you to use your own streaming app/account now. Did you still have to pay extra for internet access? Was the Westjet streaming app still available?

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Re:A Story About Bypassing Air Canada's In-Flight Network Re... by mjr00 on Friday October 10, 2025 @01:37PM (#45541595)

Nope, wifi was free. Well, have to sign up for WestJet rewards, so the price is your personal data and such. No WestJet streaming option, the information card in the backseat tells you to use your own Netflix account; yes, literally mentioning Netflix by name.

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