Unexpectedly off-line

Today I took a five hour flight on United Airlines which had been billed as an internet-access flight. So I dutifully paid my $14.99 for internet access. My card was charged, but there was no internet.

I mean, the on-board server thought it was talking to the internet, but it couldn’t connect to any actual external server. Figuring there might be something amiss with my computer, I powered down and restarted. No change.

At some point I told a flight attendant. She went up to the front of the plane to check. “It’s working,” she said. “The lights are all on.” I explained that I couldn’t actually connect to anything. This did not satisfy her. “It’s working,” she again explained patiently, “the lights are all on.” Clearly we were at an impasse.

So I went to Plan B. I paid another $4.99 for one hour of internet access on my SmartPhone (at this point we were most of the way through the flight). Same result.

I am assuming United will refund my $18.98. We shall see. Meanwhile, I got five hours of all sorts of debugging and code re-organization done on my computer that I never seem to have time for when I am on-line. So maybe that’s a good thing. 🙂

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