United Airlines will add free Starlink Wi-Fi across its entire fleet

13.09.2024 - 16:15 / thepointsguy.com / Scott Kirby

United Airlines is making a major investment in inflight Wi-Fi with the debut of Starlink satellite service — for free.

The Chicago-based carrier announced on Friday that it will add SpaceX's Starlink service to its fleet of over 1,000 jets.

United expects to have Starlink on all Its aircraft—more than 1,000 planes—over the next several years. Testing begins early next year, and the first passenger flights are expected later in 2025.

"Everything you can do on the ground, you'll soon be able to do onboard a United plane at 35,000 feet, just about anywhere in the world," said United CEO Scott Kirby, in a statement. "This connectivity opens the door for an even better inflight entertainment experience, in every seatback – more content, that's more personalized. United's culture of innovation is, once again, delivering big for our customers."

Starlink, an arm of Elon Musk's SpaceX, provides satellite internet access in over 70 countries worldwide. While the company's customers range from individual homeowners to the military, perhaps the most exciting development for travelers is Starlink's deployment on commercial airplanes.

United will become the largest airline yet to partner with Starlink, which will bring some serious upgrades to the inflight connectivity experience, especially for the airline that has historically offered Wi-Fi from a mix of four (somewhat mediocre) providers.

The satellite internet provider offers download speeds of up to 350 megabits per second — fast enough to support gaming, VPN access, streaming and much more. (Inflight calling still won't be allowed per FAA rules.)

Better yet, Starlink Wi-Fi will be free on United — a major move that brings United into the same league as Delta and JetBlue, which currently offer free inflight connectivity.

Right now, United uses four different Wi-Fi providers across its fleet, with varying levels of reliability and speed. The best is Viasat, which is installed on select Airbus A319s, Boeing 737-900s, 757s and the 737 MAX 8 and 9.

The slowest and least reliable provider is Wi-Fi Onboard (formerly known as Gogo), which offers air-to-ground service on regional jets. But with Starlink, these regional jets will go from one of the worst to one of the best connectivity experiences in the sky.

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In fact, the entire United fleet will become one big living room in the sky — arguably even better than Delta's current free Wi-Fi partnership with Viasat and T-Mobile.

Last year, I got to test Starlink's blazing-fast speeds on a demonstration flight from public charter jet service JSX. Though JSX isn't a traditional airline like United, it offers free Starlink Wi-Fi on its