• walden@sub.wetshaving.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      29
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      8 months ago

      Some airlines offer free wifi, but the ticket prices are usually higher. There’s definitely a pretty large cost to offer wifi on an airplane. Most of it these days is satellite based, and there are large antennas on top of the airplane in a dome shaped structure. This increases drag requiring a slight increase in fuel burn. Over time that adds up. The prices here do seem high, considering you only get a small amount of bandwidth. The 80MB option can be blown through just by viewing photos.

      • Sethayy@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        21
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        8 months ago

        Yeah but data rate caps are money grab bullshit and everyone knows it.

        If they really wanted to measure it per what it costs them it’d be unlimited with speed caps, just that doesn’t make nearly as much money

        And like any right drag increase(by extension fuel) would be easily lost to favorable or unfavorable winds, the noise is so small considering it is a joke - the extra $0.01 per flight ain’t gonna cost them the $50 per passenger they’re charging (made up numbers but I’m not gonna whip out drag calculations just yet lmao)

      • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        8 months ago

        Should be traffic shaping instead of data caps.
        One can text at 50kib/s and the other can stream at 2 mbit/s or something like that.

    • dansity@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      22
      ·
      8 months ago

      Scoot is one of the cheapest flights in mainly south east asian region. They are in pair with ryanair in cheapness and low quality service.

    • christophski@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      23
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      8 months ago

      Infrastructure for Internet access on a plane is very expensive and low-bandwidth so this is not surprising

    • bdonvr@thelemmy.club
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      8 months ago

      You usually have to pay for WiFi on every carrier I’ve ever been on…

      Though there’s usually not limits like this and it’s like $12-15