dailynewsnblog
When I flew in the first mainline United Airlines aircraft equipped with Starlink Wi-Fi last year, I was amazed to discover that the satellite-based in-flight internet service felt like… the regular internet. I streamed movies, accessed the web and held a video call (which is not normally legal) that had better quality than some of my everyday remote meetings when I’m at home.
Since then, United says roughly 1,200 daily departures, more than a quarter of its schedule, now have Starlink Wi-Fi. It hit its goal of outfitting its entire regional fleet (two-cabin aircraft such as the Embraer E175) of more than 300 aircraft and is on track to equip 500 mainline craft (like the Boeing 737-800 I was on) by the end of 2026. If it meets its mainline goal, three out of four United flights will be set up with the new service.
Video chatting at 35,000 feet with excellent quality over United’s Starlink Wi-Fi. (Warning: Technically illegal on commercial flights.)
On my test flight, I tried to saturate the data of as many devices as possible, from my laptop to an iPad and a couple of phones. Now that customers are using the service, I wanted to know what that looks like in real-world use. The company said in a press release that 7 million passengers across 129,000 flights have flown on Starlink-equipped aircraft.
“The [data] consumption is through the roof,” said Grant Milstead, vice president of digital technology at United Airlines. “It’s at least 100 times what we were seeing on our old aircraft, and a lot of that is driven by stage length.” Longer flights see more data usage, not just because of the extended flight times, but because those are the flights on which people are streaming more movies, live sports and other content.
He said passenger feedback indicates families aren’t spending time pre-loading devices with movies, because they know they can stream anything on the plane.
“This isn’t ‘airplane Wi-Fi’ anymore,” he said. “It’s Wi-Fi like your home. And now people are starting to treat it like that.”
Starlink Wi-Fi is free for members of its United MileagePlus program (which itself is free to join).
In addition to United, Starlink service is available on some flights operated by Hawaiian Airlines, Alaska Airlines, airBaltic, Air France, Qatar Airways, WestJet and Emirates. In the coming year, Aer Lingus, British Airways, Iberia, Level and Vueling will include satellite internet.
The dual Starlink antennas on the United 737-800 are aerodynamic bumps on top of the plane.
Some of this uptake can be attributed to the higher performance, but it’s also a matter of cost and equipment: the hardware itself is smaller, lighter (especially important for aircraft) and less expensive to install than other onboard Wi-Fi system.
