In-flight Wi-Fi is often pricey and unreliable. However, there’s a clever workaround using an Android phone, Google Messages, and its built-in Gemini AI.

Tech journalist Rita El Khoury discovered the hack using Google’s Rich Communication Services during an Air France flight from Paris to Budapest.

“I often pick the good compromise of the free ‘messaging’ plan, which lets me chat on apps like WhatsApp and Google Messages via RCS, not SMS, without paying a cent,” she wrote at Android Authority. “But this time, I needed to do some quick last-minute research, so I wanted some form of connectivity.”

While many airlines offer Wi-Fi service for a cost, they also allow free messaging via RCS, though the quality varies. RCS is necessary because SMS texts won’t send once Airplane Mode is enabled before takeoff.

Despite this, El Khoury said she was able to continue chatting with the AI during the flight using RCS.

Rich Communication Services is a messaging protocol introduced in 2008 by the GSM Association to replace Short Message Service (SMS) and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) with features like media sharing, typing indicators, and real-time messaging over data or Wi-Fi.

After connecting to the airline’s free messaging service, El Khoury said she opened Google Messages and tapped the Gemini AI button. She asked the assistant to list the day’s top 10 Android and Google tech stories.

Gemini replied with up-to-date Android and Google news, such as the NotebookLM app launch, Google Voice’s three-way calls, and other recent tech headlines.

The trick worked because Gemini runs within Google Messages. If RCS messaging is allowed, as it often is, then its replies come through like regular chats.

“Having free access to Gemini in Google Messages felt like peeking through a window at the entire internet without actually opening a browser,” she said.

While El Khoury noted that Gemini could generate images, even over the slower in-flight connection, she was not able to open links and had to delete previous chats to see proper formatting, such as underlines and line breaks.

“It was all quite a fun and streamlined experiment, like talking to the world’s know-it-all nerd over text messages,” she said.

It’s not clear if these tricks work on iOS or how long this hack will remain viable, especially if airlines catch on—but for now, it’s a clever workaround for avoiding the sky-high cost of Wi-Fi at 30,000 feet.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

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