the wifi inside an aircraft is NOT public wifi
Its on a Public Freq.
So is your neighbours wifi--- would you pirate that?
Possibly you need a password for the aircraft one just like if you wanted to use the one next door.
will certainly get you arrested and likely land you in prison.
Who should arrest me and for what?
under the US Patriot Act 2001if you ping an American aircraft.
...
I give a shit about the US law!
Syntax Error probably quoted the US act because it is the most publicised.
The sting in the tail was "Other governments may not be so lenient".
For plane passengers
since I am not a I dotn care about that.
At the end of the day, it is not the law of the land that will prevent you doing this, but rather, the laws of physics.
Just about "everybody & their cat" has WIFI at home, but in my house, I can with luck, see two others beside my own---------the iPad quite often even drops the latter!
The aircraft is going to look like quite a good "screened room" for RF , so the signal level leaking out of the windows is all that you get to play with.
WIFI is a low power system to start with, so you will need a lot of antenna gain.
The downside is that the more gain, the more directional, making tracking a major problem.
Commercial systems that track aircraft by interrogating & listening for response from their transponder usually have the backup of classic "passive" RADAR systems to point them in the right direction to begin with.
You won't have that, so how do you acquire the plane to start with?
By eye?
If a plane is passing over at 30,000 ft, you are unlikey to see it, unless you are lucky enough to see a contrail
Tracking is indeed used to pick up weak signals from satellites, but that is an easier problem.
Low orbit satellites often take from 20-30 minutes to go from horizon to horizon------an aircraft may take, say 3 minutes.
A further complication is that not all airliners have WIFi, but even if they did, there are many transport &
Military planes which don't.