How to stay connected online in airports this summer
Staying connected in airports can keep children entertained and reduce anxiety levels among adults.
The summer holidays have arrived, and for the next six weeks, parents are temporarily liberated from the school run, uniform laundry and awkward school-gate small talk.
Less positively, parents are also temporarily responsible for filling their offspring’s weekdays with entertainment and activities.
A partial solution involves going on holiday, if households can (a) afford it and (b) accept the huge price premiums levied on summer getaways by travel companies.
Sadly, before getting to enjoy all-inclusive cocktails or beachfront kids clubs, there are airports to navigate. And airports are not people-friendly locations.
They levy huge premiums on everything from parking to food, insist on early arrivals despite the ensuing long waits after check-in, and involve staccato multi-stage checks and scans.
The obvious way to keep family members entertained during the interminable wait for a boarding gate to be called is using mobile devices – games consoles, tablets and smartphones.
However, mobile signals may be hard to obtain in airports, especially bigger ones or those with large numbers of people herded into locations which never seem to have enough seats.
When your phone gets WiFi down in Terminal 5, that’s a marvel
As experts in network testing and broadband speed checking, Ookla recently conducted a study of WiFi performance within the world’s biggest airports.
It must be noted that London Heathrow was the only UK airport to be included in Ookla’s league table of 48 international air travel hubs.
Sadly, our only five-terminal airport did not perform well, recording an average WiFi download speed of 63.24Mbps.
That placed Heathrow below Qatar’s Hamad Airport, India’s Indira Gandhi Airport and the lowest-ranked American airport in the list – Denver.
American airports occupied the top seven positions; San Francisco recorded median public WiFi download speeds of 196Mbps and uploads of 235Mbps.
Gate expectations
One of the flaws in Ookla’s research into staying connected in airports is that these are sprawling complexes where WiFi connectivity fluctuates wildly.
As well as hotspots, there will be many notspots (along walkways, at distant gates, at the bottom of stairwells where budget airlines like to make customers wait before boarding).
Connection speeds will vary depending on the distance from the nearest WiFi router, the number of people nearby, the time of day and myriad other factors.
Apocryphal tales abound of travellers logging onto WiFi and surrendering personal details but then being unable to load anything other than adverts connected to the WiFi service.
There may be issues connecting older devices, less popular web browsers or even services like VPNs and encrypted messaging tools.
The latter are advisable. We’ve previously written about the safety risks of public WiFi networks, and the transient nature of airports makes them vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.
Tips for staying connected in airports
Clearly, public WiFi networks have their place, especially if you simply want to download boarding passes or check your emails.
If airport WiFi fails to function, walk away from the crowds and attempt to use 4G or 5G cellular data in a corner of the airport experiencing lower footfall.
SMS messages almost always get through even if mobile data isn’t available, so keep in touch with friends, fellow travellers or taxi services using text messages.
If you have to use encrypted messaging apps, ensure your chosen platform has ‘delivered’ and ‘read’ receipts, so you know whether your communiqués are getting through.
Long waits before boarding a flight are almost inevitable, and children’s patience with patchy WiFi wears thin very quickly, so download content capable of being used offline in advance.
This could include games on a Switch, TV shows in the Netflix app, smartphone games which don’t need internet connectivity, MP3 downloads instead of Spotify or Apple Music…
Traditional media also has its place. Pack a book, buy newspapers or magazines at the airport newsagent, bring playing cards or travel-friendly games like Uno and Dobble for the kids.
Airports are a temporary inconvenience en route to more enjoyable destinations, and keeping your cool in the departure lounges will make time pass more quickly.
