The on-board experience of commercial aviation is getting a makeover. But it’s not the seating or the food; it’s the internet. With superfast Wi-Fi being rolled out on some flights, passengers are now holding Zoom meetings and playing low-latency video games at 35,000 feet.
Already, expectations around on-board internet are changing. “I understand some like not having Wi-Fi and having disconnect time, but to me, being able to fly and work during the day is super helpful,” posted one passenger on a frequent flyer forum.
Though on-board Wi-Fi is not new, the coverage and speed offered by Elon Musk’s Starlink represents a step change from what’s available elsewhere.
Download speeds range from 25 to 220+ megabits per second, with many users experiencing over 100 Mbps, fast enough for high-definition movie streaming, gaming, voice calls or even, well, Teams meetings.
Qantas and Virgin already offer Wi-Fi, albeit at lower speeds. (Virgin notes that its “high-speed internet” has “average typical speeds between 5-15 Mbps”.) Jetstar is offering Wi-Fi on its newly refurbished Boeing 787 Dreamliner fleet. A Qantas spokesperson said the airline is working with Viasat to improve international Wi-Fi coverage.
Typically, on-board internet is only reliable over land, where ground stations complete the internet signal between the satellite and planes.
Both Starlink and rivals such as Viasat rely on satellites which provide the signal to planes equipped with antennas, which then transmit to a ground station. But Starlink’s fleet is more numerous (over 10,000 small sats), travelling in low Earth orbit, while Viasat’s relies on a handful of larger, more powerful satellites at a more distant orbit.
Latency – the delay between a camera capturing an event and the event being displayed to viewers on a screen – is lower with Starlink, making for more consistent use. The blanketing of high altitudes with a Wi-Fi signal gives a level of coverage that existing systems struggle to provide.
And that struggle has been a point of tension for customers and airlines alike.
“It’s been a huge sore spot for the whole industry for many years because Wi-Fi was always spotty,” United’s CIO Jason Birnbaum said, aboard a recent United flight that featured Starlink. “And now, if you can have consistent, high-speed Wi-Fi across all your devices for free, it’s just a game changer.”
Starlink, a division of SpaceX, relies not on several large satellites in a distant geosynchronous orbit (at about 35,800 kilometres from Earth), but a network of nearly 10,000 small satellites in low Earth orbit (at about 550 kilometres). Basically, there is less distance for the signal to travel.
Australians flying to and from Hawaii can already find Starlink on Hawaiian Airlines free of charge.
Before conflict in the Middle East threw a spanner in the operations of Gulf carriers, Emirates and Qatar Airways had both moved rapidly to equip their planes with Starlink.
Air New Zealand provides Wi-Fi on domestic flights, with an international Wi-Fi rollout in progress on Qantas. Passengers can use their own devices to browse the internet and send emails. But they’re not allowed to – nor would they be able to – make calls or stream content.
Qantas provides uses the service Viasat on 100 aircraft out of its 135-plane fleet.
With the rollout on United, there will be more capacity for this kind of high-speed in-flight internet usage across the Pacific.
“It’ll be free across all classes, all cabins,” said Birnbaum.
United flies as many as 52 weekly round trips from Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide from October to March.
Because United is introducing Starlink to new fleet types, it must also get additional government certifications for each application.
Depending on the pace of the FAA’s certification, Starlink will begin to appear on United’s 777s and 787s serving Australia in the second half of the year.
This means that on those flights across the Pacific, Australian passengers can say goodbye to digital isolation, as well as the spotty, intermittent coverage common across existing carriers.
Some flyers, however, appreciate the mind space that comes with being temporarily cut off – or freed – from the internet.
Starlink has already proven popular in Australia’s regional centres, where remote communities have struggled to find inexpensive and reliable internet connections.
Grant Milstead, United’s vice president of digital, told journalists before the flight that the company envisions “what our customers might do with” Starlink. “They might watch live sports. They might be the most productive employee they’ve ever been.”
So far, United has seen “customers put a live offer in on their first home.” We’ve even had “customers vibe-code [guiding AI assistants to write code] to start the website of their first business,” and “customers leave voice memos for their children, of them singing a lullaby to put their kids to sleep on board.”
While making calls on mobile phones on planes is prohibited by FAA rules for fear of causing instrument interference, the flight – which departed Los Angeles and flew up the coast to San Francisco before a gentle U-turn back – permitted journalist to live-stream conversations.
The prosect of a cabin full of web-based callers presents another factor for flight: passenger comfort in an enclosed space.
Perhaps because of the prospect of all this in-cabin chatter, United in February changed its contract of carriage to permit the removal and possible ban of passengers who play audio or video from devices without headphones.
Starlink, which, reflecting Musk’s sci-fi inspired worldview, requires users to agree to clauses on the future governance of Mars, also enhances the speed of information available to the plane’s flight deck.
Chris Zappone flew as a guest of United.
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Chris Zappone is a senior reporter covering aviation and business. He is former digital foreign editor.Connect via X, Facebook or email.