American Airlines Finally Adds Starlink Wi-Fi — But Leaves Half Its Fleet Behind

American Airlines will introduce Starlink wifi starting first quarter of 2027.

The rollout will extend to “more than 500 narrowbody aircraft” focused on Airbus narrowbody aircraft. New A321XLR and A321neo aircraft will shift to be delivered with Starlink as well.

• American’s legacy US Airways A319 and A320 currently have Intelsat (former Gogo) satellite wifi
  
• The rest of their A319s and A321s offer ViaSat
  
• But their Boeing 737s and two-cabin regional jets won’t be converted, it seems.

With wifi free on most airlines now, older satellite systems no longer function as well. They were good enough when customers were paying and that limited use. But at no marginal cost to the passenger, bandwidth demands overwhelm their performance. The only current solution that stands up to this is Starlink. It’s frequently better than using so-called Gigabit wifi at home. Their low earth orbit satellites give signal shorter distances to travel. There’s basically no latency – you go to a web page and it comes up.

Others that have announced the service already: IAG airlines (e.g. Aer Lingus, British Airways, Iberia); Lufthansa Group airlines (e.g. Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, ITA Airways); Hanjin Group carriers (Korean Air, Asiana Airlines, Jin Air, Air Busan, Air Seoul); airBaltic, Air France, Air New Zealand, Alaska Airlines; Emirates; flydubai; Gulf Air; Qatar Airways; SAS; Virgin Atlantic; Southwest Airlines; WestJet; ZIPAIR.

Delta chose Amazon’s new wifi product because it was cheaper and gave them more control over the branding. They could fund it by pushing Amazon shopping on customers. However,

• Delta won’t begin installs for two years
  
• And (like American) has only committed to upgrade the wifi on about half its fleet
  
• Plus, the system doesn’t even exist yet so we don’t know how well it performs and it installation could get pushed back even further.

Inflight wifi is crucial to travel experience for anyone looking to be productive on a plane. Many (though not all) readers agree. It’s why I avoided United for years, and mostly avoid Southwest whenever I can – choosing to fly them has meant giving up hours of productivity. That’s far more expensive than any difference in airfare most of the time.

Of course, Southwest is going to be installing Starlink. United has a bit of a head start doing so. Alaska is rolling out Starlink. Delta will be left behind, which is a huge hit in premium experience especially as (1) their reliability has slipped (2) they extend the life of Boeing 767s which offer one of the worst business class experiences across the country and the Atlantic.

United’s Scott Kirby has often said that the market has room for only two premium network airlines. Most people assume that means United and Delta. But in the end it might not, as American ticks through years of underinvestment to try to catch up – with more premium seats; refreshed lounges; better inflight food, beverages and amenities; and more customer-friendly policies.

It’s disappointing that American is only going to have Starlink on about half its fleet, though. It’s unclear the extent to which contract and cost are the drivers of that choice. But it’ll make American’s Airbus fleet far more desirable to fly than their Boeing planes. And American’s widebodies that currently offer Panasonic systems are the ones in most desperate need of upgrade, and they won’t see the system based on this announcement.