Always Connected: My First Experience with China Eastern’s In-Flight Wi-Fi

Always Connected: My First Experience with China Eastern’s In-Flight Wi-Fi

Ever since Non-Stop came out, I had been envious of how people in the U.S. could get online during a flight. After China’s civil aviation authorities stopped requiring passengers to keep their phones powered off for the entire journey, China Eastern also began promoting its in-flight Wi-Fi service. But I had never happened to fly on an aircraft equipped with it, so I never got the chance to try it.

Yesterday, when checking in early for today’s Xi’an-to-Beijing flight MU2111, I was pleasantly surprised to see the in-flight Wi-Fi icon and immediately applied for access.

I booked the ticket through the China Eastern app. On the app’s homepage, I saw the in-flight Wi-Fi icon, like the one shown below. After tapping it and entering my ID information and ticket number—not the order number, but the China Eastern ticket number starting with 7—I received a confirmation text message from China Eastern. The in-flight Wi-Fi is apparently valued at 258 RMB. It seems this is really just something to try out for the experience. If they ever start charging that much, 258 RMB for two hours of internet access would be many times more expensive than internet in the old dial-up era.

After boarding, I still had to switch my phone to airplane mode. While in airplane mode, I manually turned on WLAN, searched for the China Eastern hotspot “CEAIR-Wifi,” and connected to it. Once connected, it automatically redirected me to China Eastern’s login page. (If it doesn’t redirect automatically, you can open your default browser and enter any URL, and it should take you there.) On that page, I clicked “Log in to the Internet,” entered my seat number, ID information, and the SMS verification code I had received earlier, and then I was able to get online normally.

Overall, compared with ground-based internet, the speed of in-flight Wi-Fi was still a bit slower. Text-based communication was fine, but uploading images was extremely slow. In addition, each registered set of information could only be used to connect one device, so getting both a phone and a tablet online at the same time was out of the question. Still, on a flight that only lasts a couple of hours, there doesn’t really seem to be much need to connect too many devices anyway.

In-flight Wi-Fi is definitely helpful for easing the modern anxiety people feel when separated from the internet. But then again, during that short stretch of time on a plane, isn’t it also nice to quietly unplug, read a book, and enjoy a brief moment of being cut off from the world?