Ok people, how do you get texts in the air? Do you have to buy airplane wifi?
this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2026
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Some airlines now provide different levels of free wifi the entire flight. Some require a free account that can be a pain to setup, some limit the access to specific apps like Whatsapp, and some like Qatar airways give you full high-speed low latency access.
But wifi on airplanes isn't new, but used to be exclusively paid for slow internet access.
American Airlines is offering free WiFi via AT&T. I also found out if you have WiFi calling enabled you’ll even get phone calls. But that also translates into SMS over WiFi. Baring that, iMessage, Signal, WhatsApp and Messenger all work over WiFi as they don’t need cell service, just internet.
I can't get shit in the air.
150 years ago, you being on a plane wouldve been unthinkable, let alone instantaneous international communication
Seriously I was astonished hearing our teenagers complaining the plane wifi "sucks" because they had bad ping at fortnite. Like seriously think about it 1 second ungrateful brats.
Didn't have internet when I was in Guangzhou all the way until my family left China 2010
I still don't know if it was even a thing in my area or if it was just because of money issues.
The idea of an airplane itself would he quite a stretch in 1876 considering the Wright brothers made their famous flight in 1903.
But instantaneous communication? They had telegraph at that time.
My point was more about instantaneous communication for civilians between a ship in the middle of the sea and an airplane half a world away.
Even if the plane existed you’re not gonna be running a telegraph cable to that or the ship. Even if you focused on radio, a general passenger wouldn’t be able to use it on a whim.
I remember calling someone in another country was super expensive but you could predial some super long numbers which made it cheaper somehow
so the opposite of jail calls.. 🤔
Lol before smartphones became ubiquitious, my parents went to these stores to buy these weird pre-paid long-distance phone cards to relatives in China because in this era, minutes were still limited and data plans were expensive af.
Like you'd dial a local number in the US then you'd use the phone's numpad to enter your destination number they'd call your desired number for you then connect you...
Idk how that worked
I saw them being sold anywhere from $10 to $50 with varying minutes
It's kinda like a gift card. You scratch off a number in the back and that's your access code, then you just call the number corresponding to your region.
Some phone cards were so scummy and they deducted your minutes while its waiting before it even gets connected. Or just calling to check minutes, and they deduct your minutes for that call before you actually make the long distance call. So you'd have to shop around in different stores to hope their phone cards are less scummy.
Ever since 2014/2015 they got actual smartphones and then just started using WeChat. Free calls and video calls over the internet. And now mobile data is unlimited (and actually affordable compared to before).
But problem is... now CCP is listening in the livingroom... 👀 (cuz they use voice memo instead of typing... so WeChat gets permanent access to the microphone permission...)
I used those to call back to the UK when I moved to the US, back around 2005.
When you entered the number you wanted to call, it would do a VOIP connection from the line you were on to that company to a line in the destination county. So it was an Internet call for the international part (which is how they did it cheaply).
I realized that because the cards I bought were from a company with "VOIP" in the name!
I had one of those Radio Shack tone dialler boxes so that I could pre-program the free US number and the card id number.
Dial down the center.
Being out of contact is underrated these days.
Used to be, on a flight or a train, and in many other scenarios, you weren't expected to work or be contactable. It was time to sit with your thoughts, read something fun, sleep, or converse quietly with someone next to you, often a stranger. That was GOOD, not bad.
Me, on a plane: sits
The person next to me: so you're disabled eh? Tell me all about it so I can explain to you how it's the government's fault, and then indirectly blame you for not working with partial blindness, one good arm and leg
Or
The person next to me: I couldn't help but notice the stickers on your luggage and laptop, with the gay flag and the paw prints, I can help you find Jesus again
Or
The people awaiting boarding when I hug and kiss my partner[1] goodbye and cry: is he, uh, you know, is your friend not coming with you?
Me: stewardess, I'm gonna need a new seat
[1]
He's technically my master and not my partner, but try explaining that to like 300 boomers
Yeah, sure, 'good'...
What I really miss is the distinction between texting and instant messenging. I LOVED chatting on AIM when I was teenager. When you wanted to talk you signed on and when you were done, you just signed off. Now anyone anywhere can pop up in your pocket at any moment, demanding attention. Worse is that a good portion of people consider it rude to not answer a text immediately or even still, consider a day or 2 to be unreasonably long. Yeah, I might be checking my phone, but that doesn't mean I'm available to talk to you at this exact moment for any myriad of reasons, including that maybe I just don't feel like it. I started treating texts more like email and it has helped so much.
You picked the wrong line of work.
As a machinist, I'm not expected to work anywhere that's not in front of a lathe or mill.
Did you go to trade school to become a machinist?
Picked it up during about 15 years as a welder. And I went to community College for a couple years where they had a shop program and learned to weld there.
That being said I could probably learn a lot by taking actual formal classes, especially with CNC these days. Everything I know is manual machining, which is a dying art these days. Most old machinists have either retired or died with their secrets. Under 40 and able to run a lathe or mill with any semblance of accuracy is a surprisingly rare trait these days.
Let us know if it asks for your uneaten peanuts or tries to show you pictures of it’s vacation.
As a matter of fact, they do not.
The lathe is from pre 1989 Hungarian People's Republic though. It'd probably have some cool stories at the very least.
It will tell you about Grandma’s Töltött Káposzta.
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It's a double-edged sword.
I can get real-time death threats from some kid from Australia while sitting in Europe, it's truly a great time to be alive
150 years? That would have been damned near impossible 25 years ago, or at least prohibitively expensive for a civilian to just do off the cuff.
I picked a longer timeframe because I knew people would have focused on non-civilian communication being possible.
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Early Chinese immigrants to the US had to write letters to get physically carried across the pacific ocean... which took like months I think. I don't think a telegraph cable even exist across the ocean back then.
Now I can just video chat my aunts in China in HD in real time... (tbh I haven't really talked to them since I left when I was 8, I only ever like briefly say a few words when mom was calling)
So bizzare to be born in this time period...
Like I could just summon any information on a glass thingy whenever I get curious
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I was once skyping from Germany with my friend who was deep in some South American jungle and my brother somewhere in an African rain forest.
And I had to tell them my line was about to drop because I was entering my town.
And I had to tell them my line was about to drop because I was entering my town.
In NYC subways, my parents would make phone calls on the D-line while it's above ground, then once it was about to enter 36 street (upbound direction), they'd be like "about to enter the tunnels, call again when have time" and sometimes they'd keep talking until the signal actually gets cut off.
The most memorable part was the manhattan bridge. They'd get the phone ready and the once they see daylight (or sometimez the night lights, if it's 6PM), they'd press call and talk for the entire duration of the bridge crossing. Like I remember once I was with my mom and we were heading home, and the subway got the the bridge segment, and mom called home to my older brother to tell him to start cooking the rice with the rice cooker so it'd be ready when we got home.
SO NOSTALGIC
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