Inflight wifi is something I was long indifferent to, but now it has become something I use on almost every flight I take. One nice feature of having T-Mobile as my cellular provider is the hour of free in-flight wifi on planes equipped with Gogo. After an hour, messaging remains free for the duration of the flight.
I typically use other methods to connect inflight, mostly an ongoing deal for iPass. But of late, but I have had a couple of short flights, not much more than an hour in duration. I just decided to use my T-Mobile credentials for access thinking this would be quicker/easier. Unfortunately, that was not the case.
T-Mobile Free In-flight wifi lasted less than an hour
On each flight where I attempted to use my T-mobile credentials, I connected, but didn’t get anywhere close to an hour of service. On one flight, I didn’t get any service at all. In each case, I contacted Gogo Support using chat, and after some fruitless troubleshooting, I received a free full flight pass, which was more than the hour from T-Mobile. Is this a hack for free wifi? Maybe so, as I don’t think the Gogo reps checked that I have a T-mobile number, before sending me a full flight code.
If this happened once, I’d attribute it to an issue with a particular plane. I experienced issues on multiple flights across several days, so I think there is an ongoing issue. Then there were multiple support agents I spoke to mentioned this is a known issue. In past years I’ve used T-Mobile credentials for access multiple times without any issues in the past. I access Gogo with T-Mobile credentials occasionally, but this issue seems to be a new thing. I’m done flying for the year, so I won’t check this again for a few weeks at least. I’ve seen some references online to this happening, but nothing in the last few months.
Have you experienced any recent issues with Gogo using T-Mobile?
