---
title: "Airline Wi-Fi messaging services"
url: https://perrotta.dev/2026/01/airline-wi-fi-messaging-services/
last_updated: 2026-01-20
---


Many airlines offer free Wi-Fi connectivity to their fellow passengers, up to a
certain amount of time — for example, 30 minutes.

The connectivity is severely limited though, being typically restricted to
messaging services only (think SMS, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, ...), and just
text (no GIFs, images, videos, etc.)[^1]. In this context, email is not
considered to be messaging.

I recently realized that (cloud) ChatGPT-like LLMs are not considered messaging
services. Which is a bummer — wouldn't it be super convenient to be able to jot
down thoughts, plans and ideas to them whilst flying? And the medium is perfect
— texting back-and-forth is all you need. Responses don't even have to be
streamed: split chunks would be perfectly acceptable.

You heard of this million-dollar idea here first.

[^1]: An interesting observation in the Apple Mobile ecosystem, due to the
    underlying architecture, is that you get to see push notifications from
    services even other than messaging (for example, email). However, it's not
    possible to interact with them.