Getting online the moment you land

Arrival is the worst moment to solve a connectivity problem and the most common moment people try. You are tired, the wifi wants an email address, the SIM counter has a queue and the taxi rank is on the other side of it.

Everything below is about removing decisions from that ten minutes.

Airport wifi, realistically

Most large airports have free wifi and most of it works. What varies is the captive portal: some want an email, some a phone number to text a code to, which is circular if you have no data.

It also stops at the terminal door. The taxi, the train into the city and the hotel search all happen outside it.

The portal that wants to text you

Of the two things a portal can ask for, only one of them can actually stop you. An address is a box to type in. A number has to be one you control, because the airport sends a one time code to it by SMS and the connection opens only when you type that code back. The design assumes you landed holding a line that can receive a text.

The ways round it are all weaker than they sound. Your home number will take the code if that line has registered on a network locally, so leaving the home line switched on, with its data roaming off, is the fix that works most often. It still depends on your operator behaving and on the portal accepting a foreign number at all. Many only accept a domestic one, and at that point there is nothing to do at the terminal. Typing in an invented number sends a stranger your code.

Installing before you fly removes the problem instead of solving it. You never open the portal, never wait on a code, never find out which version this airport runs. The question simply stops applying to you.

The SIM counter

Reliable, gives you a local number, and priced with full knowledge that you have no alternative at that moment.

In some countries it also involves passport registration, which turns five minutes into twenty when a full flight lands at once.

The prepared option

Install the profile before you fly, leave it off, switch it on while the plane is still taxiing. By the time you reach immigration you have maps, messages and your booking confirmations.

This only works if you did it in advance. An eSIM you have not installed yet is worth exactly as much as no eSIM at all.