Review: is Vodafone $5/day inflight roaming worth it?

Vodafone’s $5/day overseas roaming has long been a hit with international travellers, but it’s not widely known that the service is also available inflight with almost 20 airlines.

The service taps into the satellite-powered AeroMobile 3G mobile network, instead of a plane’s own WiFi.

Vodafone’s inflight roaming costs the same $5/day as international roaming on the ground and covers full Web access, email and messaging chats.

Available on almost 20 airlines, the roster includes heavy-hitters such as Cathay Pacific, Emirates, Etihad Airways, Lufthansa, Malaysia Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Swiss and Turkish Airlines.

Vodafone inflight roaming vs airline WiFi costs

In many cases, Vodafone’s $5/day in-flight roaming is substantially cheaper than the airline’s internet plans.

For example, depending on the length of the flight, Etihad charges between US$10 and US$25 for full flight access; on Cathay Pacific, the equivalent cost is US$13-$20, while on Lufthansa it’s a whopping €15-€25.

The challenge, of course, is that an increasing number of airlines are moving towards free WiFi.

Emirates, Malaysia Airlines and Singapore Airlines now make inflight Internet free for all passengers (although sometimes you’ll need to be a member of the airline’s frequent flyer program).

On Cathay Pacific inflight WiFi is free in first class and business class, with the same privilege being extended to Cathay Diamond frequent flyers towards the end of this year.

Etihad Airways gifts complimentary WiFi in first class and to Etihad Guest Platinum members.

And if text-based messaging and chat is all you need, that’s often free to all passengers, even in economy.

So it pays to check the WiFi entitlements with an airline – based on our class of travel and frequent flyer status – before you fire up Vodafone’s inflight roaming,

The biggest advantage of Vodafone inflight roaming

To activate Vodafone inflight roaming on your phone, disable flight mode and set your mobile network to AeroMobile.

Perhaps the biggest advantage of Vodafone’s $5 airline roaming that it’s not an additional cost to the standard $5/day global roaming.

If you activate Vodafone’s $5 inflight roaming and within 24 hours you land in a country covered by $5 global roaming, there’s no extra roaming charge on the ground for the remainder of that time.

For example, if you catch a morning flight from Sydney on Cathay Pacific, Malaysia Airlines or Singapore Airlines, that same $5 you’ve paid for inflight roaming will also cover you in Hong Kong, Malaysia or Singapore for the remainder of the day and evening. 

How fast is Vodafone inflight roaming?

To activate Vodafone inflight roaming on your phone, disable flight mode and set your network selection to AeroMobile.

But there are two downsides to Vodafone inflight roaming

The first caveat is the speed: the AeroMobile service is effectively 3G, and on recent flights with Cathay Pacific, Malaysia Airlines and Singapore Airlines it’s averaged 2-3Mbps.

While that’s usable, it falls short of the 5-10Mbps which many airlines are now delivering through WiFi and faster satellite networks.

And there’s another catch: on each of those flights, the Vodafone AeroMobile service has been frustratingly unreliable.

One minute you’ll be online and patiently waiting for web pages to load or emails to arrive in your inbox, and the next you’ll find yourself offline.

And this happens multiple times across the course of a flight, even on a ‘straight-up’ route from Sydney into Asia.

Airline WiFi can also be prone to dropouts, of course, but in my experience there’s greater overall consistency and reliability.

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