Was struggling with this on my flight today when I realized that I could connect via my Mac laptop and share that connection via System Preferences -> Sharing -> Internet Sharing and share it to my iPhone when connected via USB (just like if I was using the cable for the iPhone's Personal Hotspot feature). Worked great the entire flight. I'm assuming you could setup the same with a Windows laptop and/or an Android phone, though I can't point you to the easy steps.
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