Originally Posted by
Turbosina
I guess the boxes don't care, but at UAL at least one pilot is probably on SkyPath (real-time turbulence crowd sourced automatically from other airliners whose crews have iPads and SkyPath enabled -- mostly UAL, SWA, and AAL at this time. It's incredibly, incredibly useful to help us find the best rides and keep the FAs safe from turbulence related surprises. And of course it needs Wi-Fi to function. That, and WSI plus Jepp FD are incredibly useful for strategic weather avoidance.
I also flew 121 long before in-flight WiFi was a thing.
But I just did a Hawaii trip with inop WiFi and it was honestly annoying not having the turbulence and radar info instantly accessible.
Plus, how else are you gonna snipe that premium trip that gets taken within 5 minutes of being posted?
on passenger airlines, the WiFi is installed for passenger comfort. The passengers pay for the service, X airline pays its internet provider.
cargo airlines would have to eat the internet service because there are no paying passengers to pay for the WiFi.
that being said, the fuel savings we could accomplish by navigating around weather indicated by live feeds would prolly upset the value of the WiFi, idk, I don’t know how much it cost to install these on freighters and running a service.
I would assume once starlink becomes more prominent we will get the service on our iPads,