SIA passenger charged S$1,520 for in-flight Wi-Fi

SINGAPORE — A Singapore Airlines (SIA) passenger said he was charged about S$1,520 for using the Internet during his flight from London to Singapore on Nov 12.

Mr Jeremy Gutsche, CEO of online magazine Trendhunter.com, posted his bill on Twitter the next day, complaining about being “gouged” by the airline. He had subscribed for the 30mb Internet OnAir package at US$28.99 (S$37.63), but was charged an additional US$1142.47 (S$1,483.06) for overuse.

An SIA spokesperson told TODAY: “Mr Gutsche has contacted us with his feedback and we are following up directly with him on the matter.”

Mr Gutsche wrote an article on his website about the incident. He claimed to have made only 155 page views, made some emails, and uploaded a 4mb powerpoint document during his entire flight.

He wrote: “I had an otherwise enjoyable flight, but the sticker shock of being gouged US$1,200 made me feel like I was deplaning from Total B****** Airlines, that old skit from SNL where they kick you off the plane with a ‘Buy BYE!’

“I wish I could blame an addiction to NetFlix or some intellectual documentary that made me US$1200 smarter. However, the Singapore Airlines Internet was painfully slow, so videos would be impossible and that means I didn’t get any smarter… except about how to charge a lot of money for stuff. I did learn that.

“At one point, I spent about an hour uploading one 4mb powerpoint doc. That doc probably cost me US$100 to upload, so I hope my team liked it. I actually even emailed them a warning that my upload was taking a while. That email probably cost me US$10. And yes, the pricing per mb was disclosed on sign-up, but I bought the US$30 package, slept through most the flight, and really didn’t think I’d end up a thousand bucks past the limit.”

According to the SIA website, the airline is progressively installing Wi-Fi throughout their Airbus A380 and Boeing 777-300ER fleets. Price plans are either volume based (e.g. US$9.99 for 10 MB) or time-based (e.g. US$11.95 for 1 hour).  When logging in, you must between two options: being automatically logged out once you’ve reached your data limit, or staying logged in even when exceeding your data limit.