Problem: cannot get wifi login
You find yourself connected to the public wifi service, but unable to browse the internet because you have not reached the login portal to activate the wifi.
If the phone or computer does not successfully recognize the login portal on first connection, you can become stuck in limbo at this point, never having reached the wifi portal and unable to browse the internet.
Solution: go to this special web URL
When you find yourself stuck in this limbo, browse to httpforever.com in order to be redirected to the login page.
About httpforever.com
httpforever.com is a volunteer public site that intentionally remains on an old http connection format just for this sort of purpose, such as to initiate an insecure connection in order to reach a public wifi portal.
The problem involves something called HTTPS, which is related to the lock icon that you see in your browser when browsing a secure website.
We used to browse the internet over HTTP without encryption, and public wifi was designed to leverage this. When you would go to http://google.com the Airplane Wifi would intercept your request and redirect you to http://[yourairlinewifi].com in order for you to pay or agree to the terms and conditions.
However, nowadays HTTPS is used on nearly every website that we use. When you connect to https://google.com and the Airplane Wifi tries to intercept you to the login page, your phone or computer's browser recognizes the interception and rejects it.
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