When I flew on United Airlines’ first mainline plane equipped with Starlink Wi-Fi last yearI was surprised to discover that in-flight satellite Internet service was just like… regular Internet. I’ve streamed movies, accessed the web, and held a video call (which isn’t normally legal) in better quality than some of my daily remote meetings when I’m at home.
Since then, United says about 1,200 daily departures, or more than a quarter of its schedule, now have Starlink Wi-Fi. It has reached its goal of equipping its entire regional fleet (two-cabin planes like the Embraer E175) with more than 300 aircraft and is on track to equip 500 mainline planes (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 implemented with the new service.
Video chat at 35,000 feet with excellent quality via United’s Starlink Wi-Fi. (Warning: technically illegal on commercial flights.)
During my test flight, I tried to saturate data from as many devices as possible, from my laptop to an iPad and a few phones. Now that customers are using the service, I wanted to know what it looks like in the real world. The company said in a press release that 7 million passengers on 129,000 flights flew on Starlink-equipped planes.
“THE [data] “Consumption is at an all-time high,” said Grant Milstead, vice president of digital technology at United Airlines. “That’s at least 100 times higher than what we were seeing on our old plane, and a lot of it depends on the length of the stage.” Longer flights lead to greater data usage, not only because of the extended flight times, but also because these are the flights on which people stream more movies, live sports and other content.
He said passenger feedback indicates families don’t spend time preloading their devices with movies because they know they can stream anything on the plane.
“It’s not ‘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 select 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 United 737-800’s dual Starlink antennas are aerodynamic bumps at the top of the plane.
Part of this adoption can be attributed to higher performance, but it’s also a matter of cost and equipment: the hardware itself is smaller, lighter (especially important for airplanes), and cheaper to install than other in-car Wi-Fi systems.
