Some passengers take a long-haul flight as a welcome time to disconnect in the cabin.
While others, especially business travellers on a deadline, sports fans scheduled to take off during a final and social media addicts, have often paid to push back against internet-free journeys.
But when you are at 30,000 feet high, connection is infamously slow there and often unreliable over oceans.
It slows down screens even after you’ve splashed out on an airline wifi pass.
But now, this is going to change the reputation of in-flight wifi, thanks to Starlink, a satellite internet service by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Multiple Airlines Rolling Out Starlink Connection Soon
It appears that UAE flag carrier Emirates joined a growing group of international airlines this month which includes British Airways, Qatar and United, planning to offer free high-speed wifi to passengers while they fly.
After switching to Starlink, they will slowly bid farewell to flight mode, with live TV, streaming, online gaming and video calls at the fingertips of flyers.
Presently, air passengers can pay to access on-board wifi on most major airlines which they can access after the aircraft reaches cruising altitude.
For the pricing, it is usually based on the airline, flight duration, cabin class and a traveller’s airline loyalty status.
On the other hand, Starlink is a satellite internet service by Elon Musk’s SpaceX which uses a network of thousands of low Earth orbit satellites to provide high-speed broadband.
The Starlink service delivers air passengers download speeds between 100 and 250Mbps (with peaks up to 450Mbps), upload speeds of up to 25Mbps, and latency under 99ms.
The passengers which are connected to Starlink can stream videos and make video calls and games online simultaneously.
List Of Airlines Implementing Starlink
The best part is that most commercial airlines adopting Starlink will offer the service to passengers for free as a complimentary airline amenity.
So far it is not clear which airlines are using these services but no airline has yet completed a full rollout of the high-speed, low-latency wifi, many have announced plans to fit their fleets with Starlink.
Some of these names are Emirates, United Airlines, Qatar Airways, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, airBaltic, Air France, Air New Zealand, Hawaiian Airlines, Alaska Airlines, SAS, WestJet, flydubai.
Starlink is not alone as there are other service providers like OneWeb, a subsidiary of the French satellite operator Eutelsat, also provides broadband satellite services in low Earth orbit.
So there are chances that the Airlines including Air Canada, Aerolíneas Argentinas and American Airlines have either trialled or installed their satellite internet access.
In addition to this, JetBlue will be the first airline to implement Amazon’s “Project Kuiper” or Amazon Leo satellite technology for its commercial airline customers starting in 2027.
Coming to Amazon’s low Earth orbit satellite network, it aims to “deliver fast, reliable internet to customers and communities beyond the reach of existing networks”.
