Airport wi-fi no match for iTunes movie download

Every time I travel on an airplane, the plane reaches about 30,000 feet at the exact same time I realize I could have rented a movie from the iTunes Store on my iPhone to watch on the plane.

Too little too late.

But not on my recent trip. My family and I arrived at our gate at the Orlando airport with nearly two hours to spare before our flight departed. For the record, I don't need to get to the airport that early but the Disney Magical Express does.

So while my kids played their Nintendo DS and my wife read a magazine, I fired up my iPhone and started browsing movies in the iTunes Store. Within a few minutes I had my selection.

The rental process was simple. Touch here, touch there, enter your iTunes account password and the movie instantly starts downloading. Piece of cake!

One (not so) little problem

Or so I thought. One thing I neglected to take into account was the wi-fi speed at the Orlando airport. While perhaps ok for checking email, the wi-fi speed was no match for my 1.8 GB (that's 1.8 gigabytes or 1,800 megabytes or if you don't like numbers, really, really, really big) movie download.

So I waited, and waited and waited until I heard the words that proved I wasn't going to make it. "Now boarding for Indianapolis." Nearly 90 minutes of downloading and the movie wasn't even close to finishing.

So once again I reached 30,000 feet and once again, I didn't have a movie to watch.

Be a boy scout and plan ahead

Ironically, when I got back to my house, my iPhone locked on to my own wireless signal and completed the download in about 15 minutes.

So what's the lesson to be learned here? For starters, plan ahead. And don't rely on airport wi-fi. Even better, download the movie on your computer with a wired Internet connection and transfer it to your iPhone before you leave.