Silly me. I allowed myself to get irritated by the great customer service, baggage fees and wonderful "on time" performance of the airlines. Now that the friendly skies are full of high-speed internet I'm all smiles. I hope it's not too expensive?
Breaking new update: Apparently the Starlink Wi-Fi will be free! What a bonanza!
United Airlines Taps Elon Musk’s Starlink for In-Flight Wi-Fi
Airlines see satellites providing faster, more consistent connections
By Micah Maidenberg and Alison Sider, WSJ
Sept. 13, 2024 7:55 am ET
United will be Starlink’s largest airline customer yet. Photo: brendan mcdermid/Reuters
Elon Musk may soon provide the Wi-Fi on your United flight.
United Airlines said that it will outfit its entire fleet with Musk’s Starlink internet service, aiming to keep fliers loyal by offering zippier, more reliable browsing and downloads that the carrier expects will mirror what travelers are used to on the ground.
United’s deal is a bet that Starlink’s technology can propel it above rival carriers in offering fast, free Wi-Fi. The airline is in the midst of a broader effort to burnish its premium and business travel bona fides, which has included retrofitting planes with lots of power outlets and seat back screens.
The airline said it would begin testing the Starlink service early next year, with the first passenger flights likely equipped later in 2025. United said Starlink’s service will be more reliable, particularly over oceans and other remote areas—a key advantage for the airline’s network of long-haul international flights that cross the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It will allow passengers to access live TV and streaming, and to use several devices at once.
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In-flight internet access has become an expectation among increasingly plugged-in travelers, particularly the lucrative corporate fliers that airlines fight for. But it has also been a frequent source of headaches.
Airlines have been pushing to swap out older technology that often delivered spotty service at best. Satellites can provide faster and more consistent service, airline and space-industry executives have said, leading to a rush of dealmaking over the past few years between carriers and satellite-internet providers.
Delta Air Lines in 2023 raised the stakes, beginning to roll out free in-flight Wi-Fi through a different provider. United will also offer the service free on Starlink-equipped planes as the connections come online. Financial terms of their agreement weren’t disclosed.
Starlink’s deal with United will test whether the service can meet the needs of a large number of fliers at the same time, with flights full of passengers streaming movies, browsing social media and responding to messages.
Starlink has struck agreements with carriers including Hawaiian Airlines and Qatar Airways, but United will be its largest airline customer yet. Before signing with Starlink, United analyzed its capacity to make sure it could be scaled, and company officials tried out Starlink on rival carriers.
Linda Jojo, United’s chief customer officer, declined to comment on specific speeds, but said the company has guarantees about service.
Unlike some current providers, which she acknowledged often struggle when too many passengers try to log on, Jojo said Starlink’s service can handle a crush of demand.
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“We know we can have multiple devices per passenger and this is going to work. And it’s going to work in a game-changing way, like it’s your living room,” she said.
It will take time for United and SpaceX to roll out Starlink across a fleet that covers more than 1,000 planes. The Federal Aviation Administration will have to certify the equipment on the types of planes United flies.
Starlink, a division of Musk’s SpaceX, provides internet connections using a fleet of more than 6,300 satellites located relatively close to Earth, launched into orbit by SpaceX’s rockets. The business has drawn attention for its role in Ukraine’s battle against Russia and, more recently, Musk’s dispute with a Brazilian court.
Fliers on United will “have access to the world’s most advanced high-speed internet from gate to gate, and all the miles in between,” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said in a statement.
United went with Starlink despite Musk’s skepticism of some of the airline’s diversity efforts. In January, an X user criticized United Chief Executive Scott Kirby’s pledge to ensure that at least half of the 5,000 pilots United has planned to train at its flight school by 2030 would be women or people of color. Musk responded, saying “the CEO is Kirby” and adding a link detailing a pink, bloblike videogame character who shares the same name.
United’s Jojo said the carrier was aware of the posts, but was convinced by what Starlink would mean for its customers. SpaceX didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Starlink, a division of SpaceX, provides internet connections using a fleet of more than 6,300 satellites located relatively close to Earth. Photo: Clemens Bilan/EPA/Shutterstock
The United deal is a major victory for Starlink, which has been pressing to win corporate clients, including deals with farm equipment giant Deere and A.P. Møller-Mærsk, the ocean-transport company.
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Starlink has driven growth at SpaceX in recent years. The satellite business was forecast to generate $6.6 billion in revenue for 2024, according to an estimate consulting firm Quilty Space made earlier this year. In 2022, it recorded $1.4 billion in revenue, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Operators with so-called geostationary satellites, which are much further away from Earth than Starlink satellites but cover more of it at once, have reeled in major airline deals of their own.
One provider, Viasat, has won agreements with Delta and with Southwest Airlines. Intelsat, which offers internet from geostationary and low-Earth-orbit satellites, was hired by American Airlines to put its Wi-Fi offerings on the carrier’s regional jets.
Delta had previously tested Starlink, the Journal reported, but no deal has materialized.
Write to Micah Maidenberg at micah.maidenberg@wsj.com and Alison Sider at alison.sider@wsj.com
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