I'm in the in flight connectivity industry.
There are a few reasons why gaming isn't possible:
- Most systems are satellite based. We use geosynchronous (GEO) satellites that are 22.300 miles (36,000 Kilometers) above the equator which creates a lot of latency just getting your info from the plane, to the satellite, to the server, back to the satellite, then back to you. There is no way to avoid this. It could be reduced by using low earth orbit (LEO) or near earth orbit (NEO) satellites, which we are looking into, but latency would still be too high.
- Bandwidth limiting. Our current gen system can provide up to 60Mb to a plane under perfect conditions, so we have to limit bandwidth per person so a few people can't suck it all up
- The way the satellite system is designed. We use a hub (also called a star) system. The plane constantly receives an inbound signal (carrier) that has all the data to be sent to the users but the plane only transmits a carrier when it has data to send. If you want to watch a YouTube video, the plane pops up an out bound carrier saying it has data to send, the hub responds with the frequency and modulation setting to send the data, the plane transmits the data then drops the carrier so the next plane can use that space, and you get your video from the inbound carrier. This is done to save satellite bandwidth. If every customer on every plane has their own full time carrier, there would not be enough satellite bandwidth to accommodate it all.
- Terrestrial routing. It is not cost effective to have a data center located everywhere we have a satellite hub (we have a lot of the all over the world), so when your YouTube request reaches the hub, it is sent to the nearest data center then to the YouTube server and your video is sent back by the same path. This creates more latency.
We are always looking to improve our service but there is just too much latency in communicating over satellites that can not be avoided. I sincerely apologize to all gamers on behalf of the industry.