Anyone flown British Airlines recently? WIFI on International Planes

497 Views | 3 Replies | Last: 4 days ago by Matsui
jorgerr96
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Heading to London in July, coming back the 6...my pto request was denied but only for that Monday, now I am thinking of just working from the plane. I see some British Airlines flights got Starlink for Wifi.

How many have done work in an international flight? Any issues with connecting to VPN?
Aggie71013
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AG
Starlink is going to be on very few planes as it was just announced and rolled out to the first so I would not rely on that. I did find one article saying BA197 to Houston is the first route to get it, but you're always susceptible to plane swaps or WIFI being down.

BA197 swaps between a 787-8 (first planes with Starlink) and a 787-9 (older wifi). BA195 is currently swapping between a 787-, 787-9, and a 787-10 so a total crap shoot. Later in the year (Aprilish for the summer season) BA197 will change to a 777-300 which won't have Starlink.

Which British Airways Long Haul Planes Have Wi-Fi?
HollywoodBQ
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AG
jorgerr96 said:

How many have done work in an international flight? Any issues with connecting to VPN?

Oh man... here's something I never thought I'd be talking about.

I've done plenty of Emails so if that's all you need, you're probably OK.

Accessing corporate database systems like Salesforce, or equivalent, that's going to be a little trickier but I've done it. Just super slow. Same goes for shared files like SharePoint or something.

If you're going to try to do a Zoom call or something like that, no dice.

Big downloads, forget about it.

The one unique thing I did once on a flight between the USA and Australia (somewhere around 2012-2013) was to use a corporate hosted virtual machine (remote desktop, like a VDI for example) sitting in a data center in California to allow me to remotely control my Email, etc. That remote system enabled me to do some systems administration tasks while I was on a plane. Otherwise, there was no way to load the graphic user interface I needed.

During my most recent International trip (Feb 2026) on United Airlines between Medellin and Houston, the WiFi just didn't work at all.

On many of the International flights I've taken, the WiFi has been spotty at times so your mileage may vary considerably.
Matsui
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AG
I do work emails constantly.
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