Just pay for a decent VPN already. Why do pilots always have to be such cheapskates and then complain when the company does the same to them.
Hotspot is DESIGNED to fail at times to entice you to sign up for their paid service. How hard is it to understand that there is no free lunch?
I have a paid VPN from a good provider and never had any problems with it for years.
Oh, and the SE-WE-ME cable won't be fixed for another couple of days. The "improvements" you see are probably due to extensive caching. Any "live" content is still excruciatingly slow.