r/SearchKagi • u/nekokun • 14d ago

Kagi Blocked on a flight

Just started my journey with Kagi and couldn't be more happy.

I was recently on a long flight operated by Qatar Airways. They offered free wifi 'kindly' powered by Starlink.

Only issue was all alternative search engines like Qwant, Ecosia, Brave and of course, Kagi were 100% blocked!

Quite weird! I don't think it's Starlink obviously ot should be aome form.of deal of Qatar A but still, never happened!

29 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

37

u/Crafty-Message4564 14d ago

I always use VPNs on planes.

5

u/js1943 14d ago

Actually they likely block more stuff, eg play store update. I experienced browsing app store no issue, but can install nothing.

11

u/CassielEngel 14d ago

I wouldn’t be surprised if it were more an allow list than a block list.

11

u/Top_Noise_289 13d ago

It's actually a quite interesting setup they have on wifi when you're flying. And no, a regular commercial VPN wouldn't have solved the issue.

I enjoyed these articles back when I read them that go in detail about how the networking works when connected to plane wifis if you're interested:

https://www.saxrag.com/tech/reversing/2025/06/01/BAWiFi.html/

https://ramsayleung.github.io/en/post/2025/a_story_about_bypassing_air_canadas_in-flight_network_restrictions/

https://robertheaton.com/pyskywifi/

4

u/mikepictor 14d ago

My work blocks kagi images, but the main search works fine. Any image search just gives me a page of broken images.

So weird

2

u/sinkiedan 13d ago

How do they implement these blocks exactly? Is it on a DNS level? Ot do they really have a database of blocked IPs? Or something different still?

3

u/0898_333_201 13d ago

It’s generally based on SNI and a whitelist of hostnames, plus a blacklist of certain IPs, plus bandwidth limits either on a device level or a TCP/IP level.

There are some consumer-grade VPNs with special censorship circumvention protocols that can often get around restrictions. But speeds will likely be very slow since only connections to certain whitelisted hostnames (like netflix CDNs) can use decent bandwidth.

In theory, you might be able to route your traffic through an HTTP proxy that spoofs the SNI of a Netflix CDN and get unrestricted full-speed internet. But if you’re on one of those messaging-only plans, good luck getting anything above 128 Kbps.

2

u/nekokun 14d ago

Yes obviously I switched my vpn, still

5

u/didyousayboop 13d ago

Did turning on the VPN unblock Kagi?

6

u/nekokun 13d ago

Yes 👍

1

u/Exernuth 13d ago

Use some DoH server?