I purchased GoGo’s service on my iPhone, and the WIFi connection worked fairly well. I loaded my client, called my partner, and about 2 minutes into the call, the steward came by and said, “Sir, you can’t use your phone while we’re in flight.” Â I said, “It’s ok, I’m on WiFi.” He sputtered back at me, “I’ll have to get the head stewardess.”
She came within a few moments of his departure. “Sir, let me get this straight, your phone is in airplane mode?” “Yes ma’am”, I answered with a smile. “You can’t do that!” she protested to which I answered “Well, evidently I can over your new WiFi service.” She returned my smile, “I’m going to have to talk to the pilot.” So I told her I was a private pilot and I would do whatever the pilot required.
While she was gone, I spent the 5-10 minutes on the phone with two engineers on our team, trying all modes of communication (wired headset, bluetooth headset, handset and speakerphone). She came back to tell me that the co-pilot was ok with it, but not the pilot in command. He had requested that I stop making calls.
I asked her for a refund for the GoGo Wireless service since I was being refused to use the service. She assured me that folks at the gate could arrange that for me, but they had no idea how to arrange a refund and asked, “Who said you could get one?”
