Internet on an Airplane

This is probably one of the first thoughts I am sharing on my page, so please forgive me if it seems confusing or incomplete or has wrong grammar.

I am travelling via my third international flight, and my second flight to Tokyo, this time for a Full Time role at Mercari. Last time I travelled with ANA airlines, and it was a straightforward flight with a landing 40 mins early.

But this time, there is apparently a massive typhoon storm in the way, and we cannot go to Tokyo without skipping it. So instead, we are going to Okinawa for a 1.5hrs stop, after which it will be another 2.5 hr flight to Tokyo. Ughhh, but also kudos to all the people for making flight travel safe.

Now, coming back to the point, during this long flight, I was getting bored and wanted to stay connected to the world (enough of the downloaded content), ans especially talk to people. So I took the full flight internet plan at 18 USD, which strangely sounds a reasonable amount considering we are 11,000 meters above the sea level and here I am publishing my blog.

Anyway, since I have internet, I also decided to work a little, and research on how internet works on airplanes. Turns out, they are like starlink before starlink. While starlink requires a shit tonne of satellites launched for it have coverage on the ground level, being so high in the sky makes things easier for a plane to access the internet. This makes it possible for people like me to surf internet while over a sea.

However, satellite connectivity is often limited, and bandwidth issues can come. So generally a few things are blocked, like P2P (Peer 2 Peer) networkng and VoIP (Voice over Internet Call). So this means that you cannot do Git Push via SSH, and cannot do whatsapp calls. Also, the average speed is pretty shit at an Mbps at max.