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.
Good news, but how do we explain the partial nature of the strategy?
Yea it sucks that the trip 7-200’s don’t have it. My recent MIA-BCN-MIA was bearable after watching 5 episodes each of Landman and Tulsa King. Add in the fact that we arrived back in MIA an hour and 5 mins early helped too.
All the 777 fleet will get it when then go in for there retrofits, the Airbus fleet will be around the longest so thats why they are doing them first,all the new 737 will have it and they are replacing the older 737,it just takes time to get it all done
AA is only doing half of its fleet is because there simply is no company that can provide the bandwidth to satisfy the growing number of customers that want satellite WiFi – and the market is not just airlines.
Amazon is a far larger and more successful CONSUMER company; Musk’s most customer direct company is Tesla which continues to shrink.
Delta has spent more of its 100 years zigging when others have zagged and this will be yet another issue where the near-sighted aviation bloggers will be wrong yet again.
DL already has high speed WiFi on 90% of its fleet and also is the only US airline that offers free high speed WiFi across the US but also across the Atlantic and to S. America.
UA is the furthest behind in free high speed WiFI installations; they don’t even offer a slow speed free option now that T Mobile has pulled the plug. with just 10% of UA’s mainline fleet with Starlink, AA, B6 and DL all offer more seats with high speed WiFi than UA does
@Tim
If A is true, B must be true, too. Tim, not always a given
“[Starlink is] 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.”
lol, just no. Starlink compared to home fiber gig connections is just not even in the same ballpark. Latency is also much higher when compared to a home fiber connection, which is basically 1-3ms compared to Starlink at 25ms-60ms.
But for flights, it’s MORE than fine. Starlink’s benefit is for hard-to-reach locations, and the performance is amazing for that.
I don’t know what Tim Dunn is smoking, because Amazon hasn’t even deployed their solution yet. Delta just wanted to maintain branding, and that’s why Delta didn’t go with it. Maybe Amazon’s solution will be great, maybe it won’t, but that’s sure a big bet to place on an unknown by Delta.
Not even half-assed and over the time horizon, but sure, ‘news’
If we were giving American the benefit of the doubt, we might say, “American is trying out Starlink on half its narrowbody fleet, before investing in switching over the rest of it.”
American needs to be consistent in their “free” WiFi offerings. I was recently on a 787 from PHL to DFW and it was still the Panasonic WiFi for $25 for the duration of the flight (+/- 4 hours). The payment process was painful and slow (bad user experience and flow) on what looked like a web site from the 1990s. Plus the internet was then slow once activated and it didn’t work at all below 10,000 feet. Not worth the $25. AA should just comp that too especially on the domestic flights.
Starlink across the fleet would be great. I can’t imagine anything worse than Panasonic.
jaylo
it’s rather simple.
Starlink doesn’t exist on 90% of UA’s mainline aircraft – while DL has high speed WiFi on 90% of its fleet right now.
According to the logic that you and others peddle, UA suffered no harm for having NO high speed WIFi for years and yet DL is supposed to suffer great harm by going from slower high speed to faster high spped for more months after UA, whose high speed aspirations are a mere dream right now.
DL ALREADY has a free high speed solution. UA’s is aspirational
This is great news. Obviously more will eventually follow.
In the interim, if you need Panasonic refund assistance because their service is barely functional-
Panasonic Customer Care:
U.S. Toll-Free Number: 1-866-924-3715
Email: aawifihelp@panasonic.aero
@Tim Dunn – United’s mainline fleet penetration remains weak. That will change soon. But American’s wifi penetration is better than Delta’s today, and American will be moving to Starlink for half its fleet. And quality of wifi matters. ViaSat and Starlink are not equals.
T-Mobile is still giving free wifi on United Planes… Just used it last week.
@Tim:”Amazon is a far larger and more successful CONSUMER company”
Come on, @Tim, now you’re just embarrassing yourself. Amazon is years away from matching Starlinks’ service. Delta made the decision based on *branding* (plus I suspect it provides a rationale for delaying the expense), not because Amazon has same-day delivery of American Eagle jeans in major metropolitan areas.
@ Gary — Par for the course. Why does American screw up everything they try? Are they trying to be worst? If so, they sure are succeeding.
no, Gary, DL has more high speed WiFI equipped aircraft offering free WiFi than American.
Show us the map of AA’s free high speed coverage and it does not include TATL or S. America.
AA knows it cannot turn on free high speed WiFi because it just decided to buy the bandwidth and it is bandwidth, not aircraft equipment that limit service.
and you and others love to tout how UA MIGHT have free WiFi via Starlink and will benefit but cannot quantify how much UA LOST by not having free high speed WIFI of any kind for years when B6 and DL did.
Your logic – as usual – makes no sense.
Starlink on UA will be faster – but for a short period for either AA or DL but nowhere near as long as UA was without high speed free WIFI.
You can’t have it both ways. Either UA was at a disadvantage with no free high speed WiFI and you can put a number to it or AA and DL will be competitive with their phased-in multi-provider solution even after UA has full Starlink.
DL managed to beat AA, AS and UA with widebody deliveries by taking delivery of Airbus aircraft while the rest waited for Boeing
the same principle will apply here
I always knew the departures of Gil West and Dick Anderson would be followed by a decline in quality, but I completely misunderestimated just how sudden the decline would be. Seeing Delta suddenly in a distant third among the Big Three in so many categories after being top dog for over a decade is almost impressive vis-a-vis a cautionary tale of the perils of gross mismanagement. Of course Delta is still #1 in CEO sneaker collections and paying celebrities to be “friends” with the CEO.
Does Tim actually have factual evidence to his claim about Starlink capacity being the reason AA is only doing half the fleet? Is there a memo/press release something in writing out there? Or is this only conjecture/opinion on his part?
There are 3 guarantees in life. Death, taxes, and Tim Dunn spending every minute of every day on the internet fellating Delta in every travel blog’s comment section.
JetBlue does Wi-Fi better but I usually don’t use it. On a recent trip I did take along some IEMs (in ear monitors) that I recently purchased for less than $20 per pair. They worked great for listing to a movie on the return flight. Much better than anything that airlines supply or sell.
@RC — I’ll fellate whatever is necessary for better consumer and worker protections. EU261 for USA… one can dream!