There’s a lot of new discussion of American Airlines considering replacing their current wifi with Starlink or Amazon and potentially adding seatback entertainment screens to their domestic fleet.
This isn’t really new, in fact American CEO Robert Isom talked about the possibility of both Starlink and Amazon Leo back in December. And I have talked about both things under consideration. But it seems like we’re getting close to a decision and announcement.
Correcting A Decade Old Mistake On Seat Back Screens
American Airlines promised a ‘living room experience’ as part of their new standard domestic interior that had more seats crammed into the space, smaller lavatory, and dropped seat back screens. There were bigger overhead bins for faster boarding, and satellite wifi.
My living room of course has a television. And it’s right off the kitchen, but American scaled back its food for sale even. The living room experience never materialized, and other airlines like Delta simply offered an experience that customers preferred.
- American Airlines decided a decade ago that they didn’t need to spend money on seat back entertainment. ‘Everyone has their own devices’ (phones) and they could just stream content.
- Delta, JetBlue and now United leaned into seat back screens. Furthermore, American ditched them just as the cost to deploy them was dropping significantly (you no longer have to run wires to each seat).
United NEXT Screen - Customers turn out to still love them. Not everyone wants to use their phone for this, they like larger screens and to do other things with their device while they watch something. Not every family has a tablet for each kid. And the screens look the planes look sharper and newer.
American’s Long Haul Aircraft Still Have Screens
American Airlines for too many years was too focused on costs, to the detriment of revenue. They were chasing the low end of the market, competing with Spirit and Frontier, just as passengers were becoming willing to spend more money for a better experience. And now they’re playing catchup.
But having removed the screens from most of their fleet (and they’re about to do this on their pre-merger American Airlines Airbus A319s and cross-country A321Ts), it is more expensive to bring screens back than if they’d just put in screens with the seats years ago.
They also would have to take planes out of service, so the time to do it would be when they are doing retrofits to add first class seats to A319s and A320s or doing heavy checks anyway. Thus I would expect a long slow process if they do add screens.
Seat back screens have been a recurring consideration. There was a real push to reverse things in 2019. That just wasn’t ever going to happen under Doug Parker, a Bill Franke acolyte. They even publicly announced free messaging in 2017 and the CFO had that killed because it was too expensive.
They could have outfitted the whole domestic fleet with screens for just the cost overrun on their headquarters building (the ‘Doug Mahal’) that turned out not to even be needed – their old building didn’t have enough space for all the staff but they shed 30% of that staff during covid right after that project was completed.
American Airlines Used To Have The Best Wifi, Now They’re Being Left Behind
American really has no choice but to move to low earth orbit satellite wifi like Starlink. American led in domestic wifi quality for several years (and charged the most for it) but now they’ve been completely lapped. Starlink is faster than what most people have at home, and there’s really no latency at all. It just works. So American is falling behind (and so is Delta).
JSX (in which United is an investor) was the first with Starlink. I flew in a Starlink livery aircraft three and a half years ago. I’ve used it on Hawaiian and United.
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.
However and I do not know the status of negotiations but I have assumed Amazon Leo would win over Starlink because:
- Amazon has fewer customers – they have Jetblue – so they are likely to sell this cheap to get into the market and because it is not yet operational.
- Amazon also brings potential revenue by monetizing passengers – selling Amazon.com shopping in-flight where they can also do a pay with miles deal.
- Plus it is something farther off where American could presumably better time this with altering their current ViaSat and Intelsat deals.
I don’t have inside information on the status of negotiations with the two providers. I’ve just seen a clearer path on the economics with Amazon, although a real, functional, and certified Starlink would be the route I’d prefer to see.
American Needs To Sell The Investments They Make
What other airlines figured out was that free wifi and seat back entertainment wasnt just a key product element but they are monetizable. United’s effort is Kinective media. Screens are meant to serve targeted ads. Amazon Leo + Amazon.com could be a way to fund the screens.
If American Airlines makes these moves, they aren’t likely to get as much benefit out of them as they might think. Both are just playing catch up. Neither one is a real advance over the industry. And American simply hasn’t been willing to sell its (very real) improvements.
They do not offer a vision for where they’re going, a story of how their product improvements fit together and who they are trying to become.
That means employees do not understand (and therefore know what kind of service experience is expected, and therefore also don’t feel the pride they could in where they work).
And it means customers don’t know how to place each improvements in a broader context – and so they don’t change their priors about the airline.
The CEO needs to be explaining the vision and how all of the pieces fit into a roadmap for the future. He needs to be selling that to employees, customers, and shareholders. So far that has not happened.
When United Airlines first moved to turn things around under CEO Oscar Munoz, who replaced the disgraced Jeff Smisek, they:
- Introduced Stroopwafels as snacks in economy and Illy coffee – and made such a big deal of it they flew influencers to Italy to go on coffee tours and tastings (I declined this invitation).
- Sold a turnaround to employees, with Munoz spending his time visiting stations, talking with employees, and selling them on a future that they were part of that was going to be better. It made a difference.
Better wifi is going to be table stakes, and they’ll lose customers without it. Screens though only make sense as part of a broader plan to monetize, and as part of a broader plan to message. American is improving its coffee – dropping the same swill that United moved away from, in fact – but I haven’t heard a word about it in over three months!
F-ing finally. It’s 2026… every airline claiming to be ‘premium’ should have IFE screens (and free WiFi).
I don’t care what AA does as long as they don’t destroy the value of their FF points like Delta.
As for seatback AVOD, this is precisely the lack of strategic consistency that has cost AA so much. many of their jets – probably including the 737-800s – won’t get AVOD even if they announced it tomorrow because the ROI isn’t there compared to MAXs and NEOs that have 20 plus years left in them. but the MAXs and NEOs should be flying longer hauls anyway.
as for WiFI, let’s keep in mind that AA and DL have WiFi on nearly all of their domestic fleets NOW; HA has Starlink on most of its fleet NOW.
Viasat is working on putting up new HEO satellites and also creating a hybrid LEO solution.
Domestically, DL also uses Hughes which also is on some 350s.
UA won’t have fleetwide high speed WiFi for almost 2 more years.
Let’s not take anyone seriously that talks about comparing what UA or any other large carrier MIGHT have in 2 years w/ what AA and DL have now.
and let’s see where all this goes as jet fuel prices are certain to remain over $3/gal for all of 2026 and 2027. profits will be much thinner