Wi-Fi on the long-haul: Is the final frontier of silence over?

If you’re lucky enough to be on a plane these days, flying somewhere, it’s so easy to feel ungrateful. Does anyone need to watch the film Red 2, again? And why do we get so sweaty?

But sitting way up high in the air for a long time, you can experience actual peace of mind. To concentrate, work, relax. Or - here’s a surprising benefit - just be … bored. 

Today, senior reporter Chris Zappone, on the joys of his recent 17-hour long-flight from Singapore to New York City. And the new technology that might bring this to a halt.

 

Subscribe to The Age & SMH: https://subscribe.smh.com.au/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

S1 (00:03):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. And I'm Samantha Sellinger Morris.
If you're lucky enough to be on a plane these
days going anywhere, it's so easy to feel ungrateful. Does
anyone really need to watch the film Red two again?

(00:25):
And why do we get so sweaty? But sitting way
up high in the air for a long time, you
can experience actual peace of mind or something close to it.
To concentrate, work, relax. Or here's a surprising benefit just
be bored. Today, senior reporter Chris Scipione on the analog
high that he recently experienced during a long haul flight,

(00:48):
and the new technology that might bring this to a halt.
First of all, Chris, tell us about this innovation that's
rippling through the aviation industry that may jeopardize our ability
to think clearly or deeply, or be productive for that matter,
while flying.

S2 (01:08):
Well, it won't be a surprise to most people, but
it's Wi-Fi, and it's the growing prevalence of Wi-Fi in
cabins in planes.

S3 (01:17):
Stay connected with in-flight Wi-Fi unlimited. Complimentary.

S4 (01:21):
Today, we'll show you how to connect to the onboard
Wi-Fi on Ethiopian.

S5 (01:25):
What if you never had to settle for slow Wi-Fi?
Even at 35,000ft? The peace of mind of always being
connected is why Qatar Airways is offering Starlink.

S2 (01:34):
So it's offered at many different service levels. Some airlines
make you pay for it, and with Wi-Fi you can
have access to the internet. It's almost always much more
spotty than what you'd get on the ground. But it
is starting to change the experience of people as they're flying.

S1 (01:57):
I guess. Tell us a bit more about this. You
know what? Does it change the experience so much?

S2 (02:01):
Well, I think because it brings the terrestrial world into
that sanctuary that is your cabin. You're no longer free
of those, you know, worrying bits of detail that are
sort of trailing you from your life on the ground.
I mean, obviously it can be good if you need
to communicate with a family member, that's great. But, you know,
when you're getting updates from, you know, marketing companies, you're

(02:22):
getting spam for things that you're not interested in. You're
getting reminders of of bills. You know, it's not quite
as fun. And so that I think is quite a
change for aviation. It's been underway for some time. There's
a number of companies that provide the service. It's becoming
more commonplace. I know here in Australia Qantas has Wi-Fi
for domestic flights, so it's pretty common once you're up

(02:45):
in the air to have access to it. But yeah,
this is very much a part of the new offerings
that you see on planes as you go flying.

S1 (02:52):
And so for you, I just wanted you to take
us a little bit into the experience that you had
on this long haul flight, I guess. Tell us about
how much of a space it was for undistracted thought
that you think that Wi-Fi, or increased availability of Wi-Fi
is really going to disrupt.

S2 (03:07):
So I was offered a flight on Singapore Airlines to
review and it went from Singapore to New York. So
it's one of the longest trips in the world. And
I wanted to learn specifically about how Wi-Fi is used
on these long haul flights. I flew about 18 hours,
and for the most part, the connection was good or
as good as can be expected when you're flying over
30,000ft in the air. Okay, so now I've woken up

(03:31):
from a sizable sleep and now I'm now I'm really
going to test whether or not I use Wi-Fi and
to what extent. Even now, with very good systems, there
are parts and places in the world where you cannot
get full access to the internet. I was monitoring the
Wi-Fi connection, and then it was really when I got

(03:51):
over Alaska where it just cut out and we are flying.
We've passed across the Bering Strait and we're over Alaska
right now. So this will be a real test of
whether or not the in-flight Wi-Fi works. And so there
I am, you know, you know, above Fairbanks or something.
And it was just flying. The way I the way
I remember it, which was flying, you know, and you're

(04:14):
just in your cabin and you've got, you know, you've
got some peace. I'm getting a full blank screen, just
a just a little shade of the outline of what
a Facebook page should look like. So that means that
I've achieved WiFi freedom in the air. And this is
how far you must go to do that these days.

(04:37):
But there are new technologies coming along. We know Elon
Musk's Starlink has really increased the download speeds of Wi-Fi
in the air for the airlines that are using them.
So some of the airlines include Qatar Airways, also united.
That gives blazing fast download speeds. And that is quite
a different experience for a lot of people who are flying.

S1 (04:58):
And so why is this happening? Like are airlines responding
to a demand? Do passengers want to stay connected to
what's going on on the ground? Like, is that why
we're getting this?

S2 (05:07):
I think it's probably it's almost the expectation that, you know,
why don't we have Wi-Fi? I mean, you have Wi-Fi
everywhere else. You have it in hotel lobbies, you have
it in, you know, public places. You have it at
public events where you log on and you know, you
have it in airport terminals. It's everywhere. So why wouldn't
it also be on a plane? I just think that
it does alter the experience of travel. When you're flying

(05:32):
and you're on this kind of, you know, you're on
this journey you have this time typically, historically, you know,
this time where you're enclosed with other people and you're
sort of enclosed in your own thoughts and in your
own world, and you get, you know, a moment to
kind of sit back and and consider life on the
ground where you've left and where you're going to. You
have time to sort of, you know, reorient your thoughts about,

(05:52):
you know, the next part of your journey. And Wi-Fi,
I think, possibly takes that away. And it makes makes
being in the plane feel possibly a bit more like
being in the terminal or being at the gate waiting
to go.

S1 (06:11):
We'll be right back. And so when you were just
recently on this flight, did you have some profound thoughts
or something while you were disconnected from Wi-Fi? Like, tell us,
tell us what you achieved that the rest of us
can only, you know, hope to.

S2 (06:30):
No, no, that's. I didn't have any profound thoughts. I
have to be totally clear. But it's more the experience of.
I mean, I think it's like the experience on the
ground where if you wake up on a Sunday morning and,
you know, you wake up you, you have a coffee,
you go for a run, you feel very clear headed.
And you, you resist the urge to pick up your phone.
So you're very much in that moment. It feels very
different and very sort of clarifying to that kind of

(06:53):
haze that we get into where we're just deluged with
information across all of our devices in the middle of
the week. And I think that flying was a bit
like that, where you really had that sort of moment
where you're pausing from, you know, this endless buzz of
news and headlines and updates that are constantly grabbing your attention.
I mean, this is why I read paper books. When

(07:16):
you're reading a book, a paper book. And I have
to say that I have to distinguish paper. You are
taken into that world and you're you're cut off from
all of the rest of the wired world. So you
can really it becomes very immersive. And I think that,
you know, existing without Wi-Fi for short periods can be similar.
You have time to say you're watching a movie, you're
watching the movie, and there's nothing else. It's just that movie.

(07:37):
It's just that film.

S1 (07:38):
I love that for you. On a Sunday morning, after
you've done something functional, like go for a jog or
for a swim, that you're avoiding your phone like, I
love that. I'm just I'm one fraction of a second
away from checking my phone in the water.

S2 (07:49):
Oh, look, I mean, that's that's more like, you know,
being on vacation. I wouldn't say on a regular weekend.
I have to clarify. Don't don't think that I'm, you know,
at home on weekends, not on my phone. Of course
I am. But but I mean, tell me this. Don't
you feel different if you if you have a day
where you have moderate phone use in the morning and
then you go about your business and you do all
the things that you're going to do, does that feel
different than a day where you wake up and for

(08:10):
whatever reason, you find yourself completely online all day long, right.
So we can. And by by the middle of the afternoon,
you're just feeling like, oh, you want to release from
the day. I mean.

S1 (08:20):
Oh, are you kidding? After an hour and a half,
I feel like absolute garbage. I feel like I've walked
out of the gutter and I pretty much do that daily,
which would explain a lot of things to. But. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
You feel horrible.

S2 (08:31):
Yeah. I mean, it's I mean, I noticed this years ago.
I mean, this was right when with social media on
phones and it was actually, to be honest, probably right
after Trump got elected where you couldn't put it down.
The headlines were just so head hopping, you couldn't put
it down. Um, we went on a vacation, a family vacation,
and I'm just checking all these updates, and I realized
I missed the vacation. I was there in body, but

(08:52):
not in in mind. And so it got me thinking, okay,
I need to be a bit more strategic about when
I'm using this technology and give myself periods where I
have time off of it. After that, it gives me
the sensation of something very lucid and very clear, and
I don't get that from my daily routine, just in
the in the sort of digital world that we live in.

S1 (09:11):
I mean, do you think we've got too much of
a good thing now? Like you said before, we've got
Wi-Fi wherever we go. You know, we've got them on trains.
It's like Doctor Seuss, you know. Can you do it
in the grass? Can you do it like you can
do it everywhere, right? So do we really need it
on planes? Everywhere?

S2 (09:25):
Well, look, I mean, you know, after having said all
of this, I did use the Wi-Fi on the plane,
and I did use it for work related things. So it's,
you know, I can see how useful it is, but
it's like it's like anything else with technology, once that
technology is adopted, it changes the standards with it. So
once it becomes normal to have Wi-Fi, it becomes very
hard not to have Wi-Fi. But once we're used to

(09:46):
the idea that people have Wi-Fi in the air, there's
no longer this notion that oh, so and so is traveling.
They're pretty much on at all times, and that's going
to change the world for a lot of people. So yeah,
I mean, you know, I guess as a society we
have to decide do we, do we want this? Do
we want high speed downloads and Wi-Fi in our planes?
I don't know, you know, once upon a time, Sam,

(10:07):
you know, there was when people smoked in public, in restaurants,
there would be smoking and non-smoking. Maybe now they'll be
like Wi-Fi and non Wi-Fi on planes.

S1 (10:15):
What about in restaurants? I remember smoking and non-smoking sections
on a plane.

S2 (10:20):
Yeah, yeah. So maybe this was, you know, I mean,
you know, one thing I've heard is with the fast,
very fast downloads that allows people to use streaming. So
they're on their phone, on WhatsApp, or they're doing a
video chat to family back at home. But then you've
got this sort of chatter in the cabin that you're
that you're not used to. And this has become problematic
for some people because then suddenly you've got this kind

(10:42):
of like energy that doesn't feel that sort of sedate. Okay,
we're all seated. We're all on this journey together. Yeah. It's, you.

S1 (10:49):
Know, oh, God. But then that, that will enable people
to make reels for Instagram and then like, post it
live and.

S2 (10:54):
And real time. Yes.

S1 (10:55):
Do we want that, Chris? Do we want.

S2 (10:57):
That for me I know how I know where I
stand on this, but I mean, there has to be
some refuge from this. And, you know, I feel like
people are looking for that on the ground. And we
hear these stories about young people who never get a
chance to be bored because they're always so hyper entertained
with their devices. Well, I mean, this is an opportunity for,
you know, a little bit of boredom for adults. And
I find that useful, that idle time to, to be

(11:19):
able to sit back and, you know, think about something
in the big picture.

S1 (11:23):
Well, thank you so much, Chris, for your time.

S2 (11:25):
Sam. Thank you.

S1 (11:40):
Today's episode was produced by Tammy Mills. Tom McKendrick is
our head of audio. To listen to our episodes as
soon as they drop, follow the Morning Edition on Apple, Spotify,
or wherever you listen to podcasts. Our newsrooms are powered
by subscriptions, so to support independent journalism, visit The Age
or smh.com.au. Subscribe. And to stay up to date, sign

(12:04):
up to our Morning Edition newsletter to receive a summary
of the day's most important news in your inbox every morning.
Links are in the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris,
thanks for listening.