Airline Hit A Passenger With $1,142 Internet Bill; Here’s How To Deal With Inflight Internet Service

on December 9, 2014 at 7:30 am

A one-way Business Class airfare for the route from London to Singapore flying with Singapore Airlines is about $3,576. And Jeremy Gutsche’s inflight Internet bill was nearly half of the ticket value. This is considered the most expensive bill of an airline’s Internet Service ever.

“I just answered some work emails and uploaded a single powerpoint document. I wish I could blame an addiction to Netflix or some intellectual documentary that made me $1,200 smarter. However, the Singapore Airlines Internet was painfully slow, so videos would be impossible and that means I didn’t get any smarter, except about how to charge a lot of money for stuff. I did learn that,” said Gutsche.

The passenger claimed that he bought the $30 package, slept through the 13-hour flight, and he ended up a thousand bucks past the limit. Fortunately for TechDrive Readers, you will not be so shockingly awoken like that. Here’s how to deal with inflight Internet Service:

#1: Pre-purchase a Gogo day pass for $16 from the Gogoair.com website. Even if you don’t end up using the pass on the intended flight, it’s good for a year so you can use it later.

Gogo is the largest inflight WiFi provider, offering service on more than 2,000 planes including those of Delta, Virgin America, Alaska, United, American, US Airways and AirTran among others.

#2: Another good way to save is to pre-purchase a smartphone day pass for just $8. It won’t work with laptops or tablets, but if your plan is just to monitor email and check social sites with your phone, this is great.

#3: On shorter flights or for just a quick check-in on longer flights, Gogo offers a 1-hour pass for $5.

For all airlines:

#4: Maximize bandwidth by turning off automatic updates on your computers and mobile devices. Don’t plan on streaming any long-form video.

#5: Beef up your browser by setting up a secondary, speedier browser such as Opera for notebooks and Opera Mini for phones and tablets. Opera has a built-in feature called Turbo that automatically detects slow connections and adjusts reception accordingly. In addition, with its leaner build and availability on almost all platforms, Opera handles page refreshes quickly – an important feature when you’re trying to get the latest information.

Now you’re ready to go onboard!

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