United Airlines <\/b>tapped Starlink as its in-flight connectivity (IFC) provider, announcing a deal on Friday to equip the airline\u2019s entire fleet with Starlink and offer the service to passengers for free. <\/p>\n
United said this deal covers all aircraft, both mainline and regional, which is more than 1,000 planes. Installation will take place over the next several years. Testing begins in early 2025 with the first passenger flights expected later that year.<\/p>\n
United currently has four Wi-Fi providers, and works with Gogo (now part of Intelsat), Panasonic, Thales, and Viasat on different planes and routes. <\/p>\n
\u201cEverything you can do on the ground, you\u2019ll soon be able to do onboard a United plane at 35,000 feet, just about anywhere in the world,\u201d said United CEO Scott Kirby. \u201cThis connectivity opens the door for an even better inflight entertainment experience, in every seatback \u2013 more content, that\u2019s more personalized. United\u2019s culture of innovation is, once again, delivering big for our customers.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is the largest airline to go with Starlink\u2019s service. Starlink has also signed deals with Qatar Airways, Hawaiian Airlines, Latvian airline airBaltic, Japan\u2019s Zipair, and charter operator JSX. <\/p>\n
United Passengers can use Starlink connectivity on their personal devices and seatback screens. United said that it has nearly 100,000 seatback screens and plans to grow these numbers with new airplanes and retrofits. The Starlink service via the Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellation will support applications like live streaming, working in cloud applications, gaming, and support with the United app. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re excited to team up with United Airlines to transform the inflight experience,\u201d said Gwynne Shotwell, president and COO of SpaceX. \u201cWith Starlink onboard your United flight, you\u2019ll have access to the world\u2019s most advanced high-speed internet from gate to gate, and all the miles in between.\u201d<\/p>\n
United follows Delta in making IFC service free for customers. Delta is working with Viasat and Hughes Network Systems for satellite connectivity. <\/p>\n
[Read more from Via Satellite: Alaska Airlines, Iberia, Icelandair, and Aeromexico share their connectivity strategies for passenger experience]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" United Airlines tapped Starlink as its in-flight connectivity (IFC) provider, announcing a deal on Friday to equip the airline\u2019s entire fleet with Starlink and offer the service to passengers for free. United said this deal covers all aircraft, both mainline and regional, which is more than 1,000 planes. Installation will take place over the next […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50549"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}