Not your normal kind of piracy, I know, but thought some would be interested.
On a recent flight I was screwing around on my phone while connected to Southwest’s WiFi. Southwest doesn’t have traditional In-flight entertainment, instead offering movies and shows through a local LAN server on their WiFi for free. To get Internet access you load the site and pay $8usd using a CC, and then they’ll unblock your device from the WAN.
Here’s the fun part, for the LOLs I tried accessing my various VPNs and Proxies, including Google’s, not expecting much. I’ve known of various tricks involving setting up a VPN or SSH on a DNS port or similar to try and get past web filters, but I’ve never been bothered enough to go through the trouble. But thinking of that, I decided to give Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 DNS app a try, since while its kinda a VPN, it does some things differently since their goal isn’t to give you a full VPN on their free plan, just improve your DNS and routing performance. But after waiting a long few seconds it amazingly said connected. At first I thought it was a fluke, thinking its connected but not actually working, but after doing a random Google search I realized it was actually somehow forwarding my packets to the WAN proper. I was FREE!
Though I should dampen expectations a bit. While it’s definitely full net access, it’s slower than molasses. Whatever route Cf is maneuvering packets through, it’s not a fast one. Random access would be at best in the three digit Kbps range, with sustained sometimes spiking into the 1-2Mbps, and latency was measured in Seconds, not Milliseconds. Netflix refused to load the detail pages for movies and shows, and YouTube failed to load videos whether streamed or trying to download. I was able to get a 240p YT video to download with Youtube-DL/yt-dlp though.
And just to make sure it wasn’t just the plane’s connection that was slow, I checked with a seatmate that had paid the $8 for Internet access, and their experience was definitely faster than mine, loading videos with ease.
So while you can browse the net, read some articles, and chat on Mastodon and Lemmy, patience is a virtue. But it’s way better than nothing, and great way to just check a few things in the air without dropping the $8.
YMMV with other airlines, but it’s worth a shot.
Update: Just did another flight and this time didn’t have success. The in-flight Wifi system on this flight was older though, with the old 2D flight tracker, and all the VOD content was broken too, so the Internet was probably just busted.
If you don’t want CloudFlare, it’s also possible to spin your own tunnel over DNS with iodine.
I think the slow speed is also for the suckers that paid for full access. Satellite internet (except starlink) is notoriously slow and if we suppose 20 people using the same link at the same time…
My seatmate was having a faster expirience with the paid Internet, so I think there’s definitely some bottlenecking with Cf, but he also kept getting randomly disconnected, so he wasn’t satisfied either XD
Southwest has the shittiest in flight wifi I’ve ever used. Frontier had better wifi the last time I used them.
Yeah, it’s not great in general.
Got a SWA flight in a couple days. Downloaded that app to test this. So all I have to do is click that toggle in the app to turn it orange and then connect to the wifi as if it was a normal unsecured network? Are all settings default?
Just left it on the default Warp settings. Only major change was whitelisting the domains for the in-flight entertainment.
Best to connect to the WiFi first, and then turn on CloudFlare.
Be aware that sometimes the in-flight Internet is just busted though.
How do I whitelist those domains?
Settings-> Advanced-> Connection options-> Local domain fallback-> ENTER EXCLUDED SUFFIX
southwest.com getconnected.southwestwifi.com tracker.southwestwifi.com
That’s probably the best in-flight entertainment they can’t offer!
Just for whatsapp use that’s great.
I’m pretty sure using iMessage and whatsapp on southwest is free and you don’t have to pay the $8
oh then I definitely don’t see any other usage for 300kbps. Unless you like pain of course
Pretty sure WhatsApp is free on Southwest anyway.
I’ve use Wireguard VPN connected to my VPS - that worked on AA InFlight, but not on every one of them, recently stopped working. i’ll five CF a shot
Sheesh, if only I saw this… one week ago.
what have you done with cloudflare’s app ? Did you just run it or did configurations or entered just the ip and password for your VPN servers ?
Just left it on the default Warp settings. Only major change was whitelisting the domains for the in-flight entertainment.
Free but it costs 8usd? That’s not how my math works.
They bypassed paying $8, getting full access on the nerfed free version
So you passed math but failed reading, eh?
Ahhh, no, no they didn’t.
If you read the text, rather than just the title, OP says that the movies over LAN via wifi are free, and then goes on to say that you get access for 8 bucks.
The relevant section :
Southwest doesn’t have traditional In-flight entertainment, instead offering movies and shows through a local LAN server on their WiFi for free. To get Internet access you load the site and pay $8usd using a CC, and then they’ll unblock your device from the WAN.
You get internet access if you pay the 8 dollars, you don’t need internet access to watch the free movies/shows. WiFi =/= internet access.
And then if you keep reading you’ll see where they gave instructions on how to avoid having to do that.
Why are you going to lecture someone about only reading part of something and then do the exact same thing yourself?
I suspect that you can connect to the network for free, but whatever gateway they have won’t route anything unless you pay for access
OP routed around their gateway and got access without needing to pay.
You connect to the WiFi for free, but you only can access their webpage that has the in-flight entertainment if you don’t pay extra. The $8 gets you access to Google and the rest of the Internet.
Next time, can you try using ProtonVPN with free plan? My work blocks all the VPNs except ProtonVPN for some unknown reason and gives me the normal speeds.
Im am not familiar with proton vpn but on networks that block vpns the only thing that works on mullvad is openvpn on tcp:443 because it can’t differentiate between vpn and normal http trafic. I assume its the same on proton
Ooh.
Tried on a spirit flight recently, didnt work
So basically they were just blocking you at the DNS level? Probably, you were getting the same treatment as anyone else. Unless, their DNS server pointed you to better Netflix servers or cached content…I don’t know.
I usually do VPN, or I do get the initial sign in, and then switch to VPN to do whatever I want.
Unfortunately I think this is an uncommon situation with your sample size + mine. I flew two Southwest flights recently and neither of them were able to let 1.1.1.1/WARP through, at least for iOS. They were both different plane models.
Oof, that’s unfortunate.
I flew Delta and they offered free internet for WhatsApp, iMessage and Facebook Messenger text-only messages. Better than nothing, but I suppose some of you here would have been able to access the full WAN through that.
