Make your flights feel shorter with Gogo Entertainment (app review)

There used to be a time where staying entertained on a flight boiled down to bringing a book, sleeping, or spending a fortune buying iTunes movies. There are a lot more options these days thanks to Gogo, an inflight broadband Internet service provider. Gogo provides Wi-Fi on major airlines such as American and Delta to name a few. For a full list of participating airlines, click here.

The Wi-Fi service is pricey starting at $7 for 1-hour use or $19 for an all-day pass. The Wi-Fi can be a bit spotty in my experience. The service should be used for light Internet browsing and emails. If you’re expecting to stream Netflix, prepare to be disappointed.

However, there is another feature that can keep you entertained for free. It is the Gogo Entertainment app, which offers a selection of Hollywood’s biggest hits and latest TV shows (no Internet purchase required).

 

How does it work?

The exact instructions may vary slightly from airline to airline, but here is the general directions for mobile devices.

1. Connect to the gogoinflight network and launch web browser
2. Select “Entertainment” from menu.
3. Pick a movie or TV show to start watching.
4. If using a mobile device, the Gogo Entertainment app will open to play your selected show or movie.

Laptops are okay to use as long as it has Adobe Flash. Connect to the gogoinflight network and type airborne.gogoinflight.com in your browser’s address bar.

Each airline should have the exact instructions in the front pocket of the seat in front of you if you run into any trouble. The biggest tip I can give is to download the Gogo Entertainment app on your mobile device before you are in the air. Most of the negative reviews on the app are from users who waited until mid-flight to try downloading the app. It is possible to download the app during the flight, but I highly recommend against it. There is a high probability that the download speed is going to be incredibly slow. There are reviews of people complaining that it took over 30 minutes to download the app.

Impressions

Getting your selected movie or TV show to play can be a bit tricky. This is another huge tip. The Gogo Entertainment app will not load if you are using incognito mode or private browsing mode. This was a rookie mistake I made the first time I tried watching a movie using the Gogo Entertainment app. It also takes some time and a couple tries for your mobile device to connect to the gogoinflight network. However, once you’re connected everything should run smoothly.

There is a great selection of popular movies available in the Gogo Entertainment section. I recently went on a trip to Cabo, where the flight flew by thanks to Ben Affleck in The Accountant. Other selections that were available were The Martian, Creed, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and about a dozen more. There are many popular TV shows from channels such as Cartoon Network, Food Network, and HGTV.

For the most part, the Gogo Entertainment app worked decently. I’m one of those guys that likes to watch movies with subtitles on. My friends hate me for it. I found that I had to tap the subtitle option ten times before the app finally registered my tap and turned the subtitles on. I’ve also had instances where the app got stuck in portrait mode and I had to restart the app to get it into landscape mode.

The entertainment app works best when the plane is 10,000 feet in the air. I found that the Gogo Entertainment app gets less reliable during the planes descent. The connection will start to cut in and out, causing the movie to exit out. You can reconnect to the network and try to watch the movie again. However, I noticed that the movie will start to crash every 3-5 minutes and I would have to continually reconnect to the network to continue watching the movie.

Overall

I can’t complain too much about the Gogo Entertainment app. It served its purpose, which was to keep me entertained and make my flights zip by. Did I mention that this was all free? Free is good and beggars can’t be choosers. I was most impressed with the selection of movies. There were a ton of popular movies that I had not gotten a chance to watch that were available. I can’t stress this enough. Please make sure to download the app before your flight to save yourself a major headache.