Multiple lifetimes of thousands of the most brilliant engineers collaborating, sharing algorithms, protocols, mining, smelting, developing tooling to create tiny rocks that can think and blasting them to hover over the earth just so we can slightly annoy the person next to us with a conversation about the weird stuff growing between our toes.
From a technical standpoint, the ability to make VoIP phone calls from planes exists right now, at least on planes with newer and better internet connections. It hasn't been enabled because of ferocious customer opposition every time the idea is proposed. Which, frankly, is just fine with me. People can still send emails and messages from in-flight Wi-Fi, no need to subject everyone else to your phone calls.
Could? I flew a month ago on a flight with Starlink. I downloaded 10s of gigabytes of data without hiccups. Calling was not an issue. And it was completely free.
Not one time have I had a consistent internet connection whilst flying transatlantic on Delta, KLM or BA airplanes, to the point that I regretted having paid for it every single time.
I haven’t been to India for 7 years but I distinctly remember a very productive flight from Delhi to Heathrow on wifi while I was sshed into a machine and working on something for hours with no issue - far better than the signal I get on the train from London to Manchester.
Qatar/Virgin Australia, Sydney->Doha. I’ve never had really good connection either before this, and I tried many-many times. That was the exception when it worked as intended.
Having been trapped on a 2 day flight to Madeira via Madrid, Porto and Porto Santo, eventually your powerbanks and headphones run out of charge.
EU621 comp was denied because the aircraft could not land due to wind.
I did spend about 12 hours in a fancy all inclusive on ryanair's dime (a bus arrived at the airport un-announced to the airport staff or us customers) while some slept in airbnbs and on the floor.
You can reimburse your costs of unplanned overnight stay, even when it happened because of weather. So those AirBnBs were also free. Even the taxi to and from there. Ryanair was unlawful if they hadn’t given this information.
Btw, there are power banks and headphones which can easily handle 2 days.
Surely you can recharge them on the ground too. Do Ryanair not provide in seat usb sockets? Wouldn’t surprise me if they saw an opportunity to charge £5 for their use (log into wifi and activate them etc).
