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When I flew on my first United Airlines plane Equipped with Starlink Wi-Fi last yearI was amazed to find that the onboard satellite internet looked like… regular internet. I’ve streamed movies, accessed the web, and made a video call (which isn’t usually legal) and it was better quality than some of my daily remote meetings when I’m at home.
Since then, United says nearly 1,200 daily departures, more than a quarter of its schedule, now have Starlink Wi-Fi service. It has achieved its goal of equipping its entire regional fleet (two-cabin aircraft like the Embraer E175) of more than 300 aircraft and is on track to equip 500 major aircraft (like the Boeing 737-800 I was on) by the end of 2026. If it achieves its major goal, three out of four United flights will be equipped with the new service.
You can video chat at 35,000 feet in excellent quality over United’s Starlink Wi-Fi network. (Warning: Technically illegal on commercial flights.)
On my test ride, I tried to saturate data on as many devices as possible, from my laptop to my iPad and a couple of phones. Now that customers were using the service, I wanted to know what it looked like in actual use. The company said in a press release that 7 million passengers across 129,000 flights have traveled on aircraft equipped with Starlink.
“(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 saw on our older planes, and a lot of that is driven by stage length.” Longer flights see higher data usage, not just because of longer flight times, but because these are the flights where people stream more movies, live sports, and other content.
He said passenger feedback suggests families don’t spend time pre-loading movies on devices, because they know they can stream anything on board.
“This isn’t airplane Wi-Fi anymore,” he said. “It’s Wi-Fi like your home. Now people are starting to treat it that way.”
Starlink Wi-Fi is free for members of the United MileagePlus program (which is free to join).
In addition to United, Starlink service is available on some flights operated by Hawaiian Airlines, Alaska Airlines, Air Baltic, Air France, Qatar Airways, WestJet and The UAE. next year, Aer Lingus, British Airways, Iberia, Level and Vueling It will include satellite internet.
The dual Starlink antennas on the United 737-800 are air protrusions on the top of the plane.
Some of this uptake can be attributed to high performance, but it is also a matter of cost and equipment: the devices themselves are smaller and lighter (particularly important for aircraft) and Less expensive to install From the other onboard Wi-Fi system.