HOW IN-FLIGHT WI-FI WORKS

This technology allows you to scroll to your heart's content while killing time at cruise altitude

- SCOTT DUTFIELD

Before the early 2000s, passengers aboard commercial flights were forced to rely on in-flight movies, reading paper books or cloud-watching for entertainment. At least until the internet was beamed aboard an aeroplane for the first time in 2003. WiFi’s maiden voyage was piloted by German airline Lufthansa on a Boeing 747-400. Passengers aboard this flight could access their emails and catch up on the latest news. The download speed (the rate at which data is transferred to a device) on the flight was just three megabits per second, and the upload speed (the rate a device can send data) was a mere 128 kilobytes per second. In comparison, the average download speed of American home WiFi in 2003 was around 800 kilobytes per second.