GoKawiilis transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation. His work has appeared in The New York Daily News and City & State.
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American Airlines is planning to install SpaceX’s Starlink Wi-Fi in hundreds of its airplanes, the airline announced today.
American says the deployment will start in the first quarter of 2027, and will span more than 500 aircraft, including its new A321XLR and A321neo planes from Airbus. Starlink will join Viastat and SES (previously known as Intelstat) as among the airline’s Wi-Fi providers.
American is the latest air carrier to turn to Elon Musk’s Starlink for its Wi-Fi needs. Others include United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Lufthansa Group, British Airways, Qatar Airways, Alaska Airlines, and Hawaiian Airlines. Meanwhile, Delta Air Lines recently struck a deal with Amazon Leo for Wi-Fi connectivity.
Airlines are scrambling to make deals with satellite internet providers in the hopes of improving the traditionally dismal connectivity offerings on flights. Wi-Fi that relies on low-earth orbit satellites, like Starlink, tend to offer lower latency thanks to the shorter distance the signal has to travel as compared to satellites in geostationary orbit. Viasat uses geostationary satellites, while SES uses multi-orbit, low-earth orbit, and geostationary satellites.
A recent report from Ookla found that SES-powered flights reported median download speeds of 61.61 Mbps, while Starlink-powered ones were averaging 152.37 Mbps. I got to test out Starlink on a United flight last year, and was getting download speeds of around 128 megabits-per-second (Mbps), while upload speeds were coming in a little slower at an average of 23.9 Mbps.
“As a premium global airline, we are continuously seeking out world-class partners like Starlink to deliver what our customers need and want,” American Airlines Chief Customer Officer Heather Garboden said in a statement. “The addition of Starlink solidifies American as a leading airline in keeping passengers connected in flight.”
SpaceX’s recent IPO filing revealed that Starlink is the financial engine of the company, generating roughly $11 billion in annual revenue and acting as its only consistently profitable division. In the filing, SpaceX says that Starlink’s global network is designed to eliminate “dead zones” and supports performance on high-latitude routes “that can be challenging for traditional providers.”
In recent years, airlines have been racing to integrate more tech features in hopes of winning over customers. JetBlue has offered free Wi-Fi on its flights since 2017, United and Delta have been looking to make it easy for customers to use Bluetooth headphones for the in-flight entertainment, and almost every company is adding content from popular streaming services to their seat-back displays or in-flight web portals.
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