A satellite network that was founded by Elon Musk through his SpaceX company in 2018, Starlink is able to provide a high-speed internet connection in some of the most remote places in the world so long as there is open view of the sky — war zones, the far-off nature and, increasingly, airplanes.
Air France (AFRAF) , Qatar Airways, Hawaiian Airlines and Air New Zealand (ANZFF) are some of the carriers that rely on Starlink to provide their customers with in-flight Wi-Fi.
United to add Starlink service ‘on as many planes as we can’: MileagePlus CEO
The latest airline to start testing Starlink for its flights is United Airlines (UAL) . The Chicago-based carrier and third-largest airline in the country announced that it has begun testing the satellite network, while the first flight with Starlink-powered Wi-Fi will run on a commercial flight run on an Embraer E-175 (ERJ) plane in the upcoming spring.
The 88-seat narrow-body plane is used mainly for short regional flights. According to the new timeline, United now plans to enable Starlink-powered connections on its entire fleet of 1,000 two-cabin planes by the end of 2025.
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“We have a lot planned for our MileagePlus members this year and adding Starlink service on as many planes as we can — as quickly as we can —is at the center of it all,” Richard Nunn, who heads United’s MileagePlus program, said in a statement. “It’s not only going to revolutionize the experience of flying United, but it’s also going to unlock tons of new partnerships and benefits for our members that otherwise wouldn’t be possible.”
With the Starlink partnership being worked on behind the scenes over the last year, Starlink has used providers such as Intelsat, Viasat and Panasonic (PCRFF) for its in-flight internet connection. Due to differing standards and certain rollout glitches, United has earned a reputation for having slower Wi-Fi than competitors like Delta (DAL) and American (AAL) .
Will you be able to stream a movie on a Starlink-powered flight?
As Starlink can offer speeds of up to 40-220Mbps for downloads and 8–25Mbps for uploads (a respective 25 Mbps and 10 Mbps is generally considered to be enough to provide users a decent experience), good implementation could bring United to the golden standard of in-flight service: the ability to stream videos and movies.
United also said that it will continue to offer free Wi-Fi to its MileagePlus members. Signing up to the loyalty program is free but usually needs to be done before takeoff in order to access the free Wi-Fi mid-flight.
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“[One thousand] aircraft is a lot to deploy, even taking just a single overnight per airframe to install (and not wanting to limit schedules in the meantime taking planes out of service) but it’s a future we can now look forward to,” writes Gary Leff of the View From The Wing aviation blog. “Once fully deployed, this will put United ahead of Delta and JetBlue (JBLU) (which offer reasonably fast, free wifi today) and ahead of American (which offers reasonably fast Wi-Fi, priced more expensively than any other U.S. carrier).
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