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I once flew United and, like the author, didn't realise this until I was on the plane for a ten hour flight. Downloaded the app for Android. I opened it. I was

• _hhkc 5y ago
  They had a similar check for jailbroken iPhones. The last time I flew with them they seem to have fixed it.
  • digisign 5y ago
    Fixed to block or not block?
• _fat_santa 5y ago
  Unrelated to their inflight entertainment, United pulled this stunt on me the other day. - Flight at 11AM, boarding at 10:20. - Show up at 10:25, boarding doors are closed. - "Didn't boarding start 5 minutes ago" - "Yeah we close the doors once 95% of people show up, sorry, you should show up when boarding starts" - "Yeah but didn't boarding start 5 minutes ago, how was I to know" - "You should have known, sorry"
  • sb057 5y ago
    >Yeah we close the doors once 95% of people show up So they are essentially scamming 5% of passengers out of their tickets?
    • vel0city 5y ago
      I mean, you're supposed to be at the gate when boarding starts. For all practical purposes if you miss boarding you've missed your flight even if the plane hasn't left the ground due to safety rules about letting passengers go after the door is considered closed. There's a bit of a checklist of things that need to be completed after the door gets closed and the gate pulls away. They're often incentivized to try and speed things up, so if there's nobody at the gate anymore to board they might assume those passengers decided not to go on the flight. Especially with people now checking into flights the day before, the airline may not even know if the passenger is even at the airport and would realistically show up to the gate anytime soon as checking in means pretty much nothing these days. They're not scamming anyone. Your ticket said you were supposed to be at the gate to board at a certain time. You weren't there, so you missed the flight.
      • xmprt 5y ago
        I get that rule. But why does the door close at boarding time and not at the flight time or some predetermined time like 10 minutes before flight time or when boarding completes, whichever is later.
        • vel0city 5y ago
          The door closes when it seems like there's no more passengers so they can hurry up and start working on the checklist. They do this so they can potentially get going sooner in case there are delays elsewhere in the many steps that goes from passenger boarding to plane in the air. Theoretically they could be more rigid about having a time for the door closing, but that could potentially mean there are more actual delays as now they no longer have a chance to gain some time in their schedule to make up for potential delays elsewhere. If the door closed at flight time then the plane wouldn't be leaving at flight time, it would be leaving at flight time + the time it takes to go from boarding to getting in the air. Flight time is the time the plane is scheduled to take off, which means the flight time would diverge from the boarding time, and then you'd once again be asking why the boarding time is different from the flight time and why they don't let you board until the flight time, rinse and repeat.
          • IshKebab 5y ago
            Sounds like you're describing some impossible system but that is how it works in the rest of the world. There's a time at which the gates close, and if you're at the gate before then then you can go on the flight. If not then they might wait for you for a bit if you've already checked in but nothing is guaranteed. They can still go early if all of the passengers have boarded. I got to Dublin airport once at the time that the gates were supposed to close and they said they would wait for us if we were fast... Got to the concourse and it was the furthest gate possible - the sign said to allow a 15 minute walk! Had to run all the way but we made it.
            • vel0city 5y ago
              > There's a time at which the gates close And there's a time in the US as well, that's called the boarding time. Those there at the boarding time get on the plane, those aren't there at the boarding time missed their flight. Banking on getting on 5-10 minutes after boarding time is gambling that they're running behind schedule.
  • digisign 5y ago
    United is famous for its customer service. I have a few good ones myself, but won't bore you.
    • quacked 5y ago
      If you think that airline customer service stories are boring, then I request that you do your best to bore me.
  • assbuttbuttass 5y ago
    They managed to board all the other passengers in less than 5 minutes? In my experience boarding takes at least half an hour just for everybody to sit down. Was the flight exceptionally empty?
    • trelliscoded 5y ago
      They may be queued up in the jet bridge. I've been stuck inside one after the doors closed while we waited for everyone to get into the plane.
  • cromka 5y ago
    Is this even legal?
  • magicroot75 5y ago
    I have trouble believing this is the entire story. You're saying you were at the gate thirty-five minutes before the scheduled departure time on the originally scheduled flight and were denied boarding? I could see this happening if there were a delay that was later truncated. In that case the airline does often expedite boarding to make up for the delay.
• tyingq 5y ago
  I'm surprised there would be that kind of integration between the United app and their on-board WiFi, which appears to be run by Panasonic. It sounds like you're saying the United app noticed your phone was rooted, and somehow it notified the on-board WiFi to block your ip/mac? Or am I not reading this right?
  • varenc 5y ago
    That's also how I read it, which astounds me. Would be technically impressive if it worked like that. And extra vindictive since even if they don't allow rooted devices to play DRM'd video, there's no good reason why they should also be prevented from buying in-flight internet. (one solution if that's really how it works: rotate your mac address, reconnect, and then never open up the United app again so it can't squeal on you.)
    • tyingq 5y ago
      You could also wreak some havoc by banning the macs of other devices on the plane that want to use the WiFi...so I'm pretty skeptical this cross-service integration is really there.
    • asdff 5y ago
      This is pretty common, as stupid as it is. Snapchat would do this too for jailbroken phones, only they'd also permanently ban your account. It was an arms race between snapchat and tweak developers masking jailbreak detection methods for years at least, maybe still ongoing.
      • tyingq 5y ago
        The odd part is tying the airline's app to a wholly separate thing run by Panasonic (the onboard wifi). The United app isn't required, involved, etc, in purchasing and using wifi on the aircraft. No app is required at all...just the browser on the phone. That's why we're confused about the integration that would be needed to accomplish this. The United app would have to be detecting the jailbreak and then sending some unique identifier to the third party via some separate channel.
• iamcreasy 5y ago
  > I was immediately ip-blocked for having a rooted phone What is wrong with using their app on a rooted phone?
  • tyingq 5y ago
    Not saying it's the right decision, but probably because they don't want the liability if a rooted device allows some 3rd party app to hack theirs. Airlines can be somewhat like a small bank in this respect, as being logged in gives you access to things like accumulated loyalty points, not-flown-tickets that can be exchanged/refunded, past flight credit from earlier refunds that were eligible for credit but not a cash refund, etc. Also, they typically store more personal info than, say, an e-commerce application because some of it is needed for travel. Things like date of birth, known traveler numbers, names/dob/etc of family members, passport numbers, etc.
    • asdff 5y ago
      At that rate why not also ip ban any general purpose compute device from accessing their servers? I can't believe a major airline has programmers who think blocking jailbroken cellphones would do anything at all to thwart a hack. It makes me think twice about flying United certainly if these are the incompetent hands I'm placing my trust in.
      • tyingq 5y ago
        Not that I agree with it, but the usual line of reasoning is that they have laxer rules on a native app. Like no captchas, much longer session timeouts, etc. So they aren't comfortable with the looser rules on a rooted phone.
        • asdff 5y ago
          Once again, things that are trivially bypassed by people who are active in this space, and their programmers should know better than using this line of reasoning that must just be ancient procedure at this point, especially considering the cargo they are tasked to ensure is safe.
• mdoms 5y ago
  Not defending the blocking of rooted devices, but I think it's excellent that airlines are relying on people bringing their own hardware. I think you'd struggle to find a single person in an airport who isn't carrying a screen with them today, so seat-back screens feel very redundant to me.
  • rekoil 5y ago
    As a person who carries a 5.4" iPhone 12 mini, please keep seat-back screens. I wouldn't mind if they were just HDMI-devices I can extend my devices screen to though, that would be amazing!
  • asdff 5y ago
    They aren't doing it to be green, they are doing it to save money on chair replacements. I'm surprised how rare it is even to get a seat with power hookups these days. Even in the actual airport itself plugs are still relatively rare and closely guarded, actual functioning plugs rarer still. I remember when economy meant a new set of headphones and the billboard top 20 playing from the arm rest.
    • pdx_flyer 5y ago
      And weight from the video boxes under the seats. Multiply that weight * 2-3 for every row and it adds up quickly.
• agar 5y ago
  This was probably a response to a hack that occurred in 2014. It wouldn't surprise me if it was mandated by the FAA or similar regulatory body. https://www.cnn.com/2015/05/17/us/fbi-hacker-flight-computer-systems/ https://www.cnn.com/2015/05/17/us/fbi-hacker-flight-computer... > During FBI interviews in February and March, the document says, Roberts told investigators he hacked into in-flight entertainment systems aboard aircraft. He claimed to have done so 15 to 20 times from 2011 to 2014. > He also said, according to the document, that once he had hacked into the systems and then overwrote code, enabling him to issue a “CLB,” or climb, command. > “He stated that he thereby caused one of the airplane engines to climb resulting in a lateral or sideways movement of the plane during one of these flights,” the document says.
  • tyingq 5y ago
    I doubt it. You can bring a "rooted" linux laptop onto the plane and it works, so banning rooted phones from inflight WiFi would be a little silly. I am interested in the linked story, but it's very odd that a passenger wifi network would be cross-connected with flight controls. That the network on a non-wifi seatback entertainment system could be is a little more believable, but I'm still curious how it wouldn't have resulted in an extended grounding of all aircraft of that type if it were true. There was no grounding, or order to modify that system following his twitter posts and subsequent arrest. Edit: If you search around for what happened after the incident described above, it seems pretty clear he did not send any commands to flight systems. He seems knowledgeable about them, but seems to perhaps have been caught out talking about a theoretical scenario as if it happened. He wasn't charged, and as mentioned, no actions were taken to change anything. I suspect the networks are properly isolated.
  • xmprt 5y ago
    I hate when apps lock out rooted Android phones for "security purposes" when it's so simple to get around it by just directly accessing the API or spoofing. It's even dumber when the app/website can be accessed through a laptop which is much more permissive than a rooted phone. I've never heard a reason for why companies do this.
  • throwinthisaway 5y ago