Connect to Gogo wifi and launch a browser. When you navigate to a web site it should redirect you to the login page. If not, try to navigate to airborne.gogoinflight.com since some of the browser security features don’t allow the redirects (such as my iPhones). That should kick-start the login page.
There will be a list of available plans, one of which will be Free Messaging for all passengers (phones only – not tablets). If you select that one, it should enable a limited number of services to work, such as iMessage, Wi-Fi texting from your carrier, etc.
The T-Mobile plan is for T-Mobile customers, and offers 1 hour of Wi-Fi, along with unlimited messaging for the rest of the flight. This plan offers more services, such as email, and is also only offered on phones (no tablets, computers, etc.).
The WRINKLE with this plan is that after an hour, it blocks everything until you try to do something on the web and when redirects you to an up-sell page offering you the option to buy more Wi-Fi or to continue texting for free. So I often miss some incoming message notifications that get delayed between the end of the free hour and when I was redirected and accepted the continued messaging for free.
The UPSIDE to this plan is that after the hour, once you accept continued messaging, you still have full web access at throttled speeds (for those that often use Gogo, I know saying Gogo and throttled is redundant, but it’s even slower…) So everything still works, but even slower than typical Gogo…
