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My kids are autistic and there is no way they will stay calm for the short period of traveling from London to Glasgow without YouTube.

I have read an article the other day about high-speed Internet on some airlines that you can stream Netflix (and probably YouTube) during the flight. I can't seem to find the article but I recall that it was an American airline and British Airways. However, the BA website says nothing about it.

Any idea if such facility exist with any UK airlines?

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  • Can you not download content in advance? This would be much more reliable than counting on decent Wi-Fi on board.
    – jcaron
    May 27, 2018 at 12:33
  • @jcaron I have tried that, BBC iPlayer and even VLC player can do that but kids are kids let alone they are autistic, it's either YouTube or we have a problem. I even thought of finding a way to emulate YouTube or build a server to work as a cashing proxy but both ideas are way beyond my abilities. I would happily pay extra for streaming during the flight instead
    – Ulkoma
    May 27, 2018 at 12:36
  • It's unlikely to work for you, even if it's available and actually working. It is typically restricted to "above 10,000 feet" which will cover maybe 30-40 minutes out of the 2 hours you'll spent on the plane
    – Hilmar
    May 27, 2018 at 13:18
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    You do understand that streaming video takes a staggering amount of bandwidth, simply unavailable in remote places like airplanes. A huge issue is reliability, it will be very balky and clunky. . The YouTube UI handles poor connections very, very, very badly, with lots of slow loads, freezes, beachballs and waiting forever for no reason. It makes me nuts just using it on my mobile, and I'm not autistic. That's my story anyway.
    – Harper - Reinstate Monica
    May 27, 2018 at 23:25
  • Youtube allows you to download videos and view them offline, unfortunately the feature is not available in the UK.
    – Burhan Khalid
    May 28, 2018 at 4:49

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BA is rolling out a Wi-Fi service which allows streaming (for a fee): https://www.britishairways.com/en-fr/information/entertainment/wifi-on-board

However: - their goal is to have 90% of their aircraft connected by 2019. Until then, you can't know for sure if Wi-Fi is available on the specific aircraft or flight. Also, as usual, focus is on long-haul aircraft first.

  • contrary to what some US airlines do, they don't seem to advertise in advance which flights will or will not have Wi-Fi

  • you can only use it above 10 000 feet, which for a Glasgow-London flight is going to be a quite short period of time, especially once you take out the time to actually connect to the service, pay for it, etc.

  • they aim to deliver 1 Mbps on the "Stream" package, which is quite low and will probably deliver a low-quality experience

  • pricing for the "Stream" package

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