[andy99]

I was trying to understand how this could be used for flights. I've seen either having to enter your last name and seat, or loyalty plan number to get in-flight wifi. Are there really airline wifis that give every mac address a free amount of time?

A lot of airlines now offer free "messaging" - usually just text on common messaging apps like WhatsApp. I've been meaning for years to write some kind of server that could give me useful functionality over chat messages.

[userbinator]

I've been meaning for years to write some kind of server that could give me useful functionality over chat messages.

Already done:

WhatsApp: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33568994

Facebook Messenger: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9203946

SMS(!): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8304409

[mcshicks]

Pretty sure it will work on JAL at least right now. They just asked for an email. But it was also a new service so maybe to wanted people to try it. It occurred to me at the time that two devices with two emails should work for twice as long. For what I wanted to do on that flight, i.e. check and send a few messages the one free hour was fine. But yeah of course they could change it so that would not work.