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On a recent 12h Air New Zealand flight I went on they offered free wifi for everyone. They say you can:

- Browse the web.

- Send and receive emails and messages.

- Check and post to social media

In practice I think they just whitelist a few messenger apps. Everything else was unusable - I couldn't even load this site. Only had my phone so couldn't check if I was actually receiving any bytes from other sites, but it at least wasn't immediately blocked.

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> - Browse the web.

> - Check and post to social media

> In practice I think they just whitelist a few messenger apps. Everything else was unusable

That was probably intentional, because to the vast majority of the users of these services, 'the web' is just a handful of the same social sites. As long as they can post a few things about their trip, that's the extent of the web access that they need or care to want. Sucks when you're expecting the whole kit and kaboodle, but the airlines seem to know their customers.

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