United Airlines, the largest airline in the world, has announced plans to upgrade its entire fleet to Starlink-powered in-flight Wi-Fi beginning this spring. The company is also speeding up its existing plans to offer Starlink access for free to all of its "MileagePlus" members.
United will begin testing Starlink connectivity in flights in February and hopes to offer it in commercial flights as soon as this spring. The first wave of the fleet to see Starlink will be certain regional flights on the Embraer E-175 aircraft, a smaller 88-passenger plane often used for transit between small, local airports. By the end of 2025, United plans to have its entire regional fleet Starlink operational and launch its first mainline Starlink flight.
United Airlines plans to add Starlink to its entire fleet of 992 aircraft, though the timeline for upgrading all planes is not public. The news that United is ramping up its rollout comes after United signed the flight industry's largest-ever agreement with Starlink in September 2024, when the announced timeline was several years long.
Starlink, the satellite internet service run by SpaceX, is already Hawaiian Airlines' inflight Wi-Fi provider. All Hawaiian flights offer free Starlink Wi-Fi, and anecdotal reports suggest that online sharing download speeds hover around 100 Mbps while flying over the Pacific Ocean.
This performance knocks other inflight Wi-Fi providers out of the water in terms of its coverage over the mid-Pacific and its speeds. Some customers also report higher-than-average packet loss and other network slowdowns using Starlink in flight, but this comes with the territory of satellite Wi-Fi and should improve as Starlink upgrades its satellite web.
Starlink Wi-Fi in United flights will be free to all MileagePlus members, which is itself a free rewards membership through United. This matches the standard set by Hawaiian and will beat out competitors' paid inflight Wi-Fi plans.
Starlink's customer service and other services are powered by xAI, another Elon Musk-owned venture focused on artificial intelligence. xAI recently announced the completion of a $6 billion funding round dedicated to raising money for the next wave of xAI supercomputer clusters, adding to Musk's stable. xAI trains its AI with data from Tesla and SpaceX, though assumedly, United fliers accessing Starlink will not have their browsing data used by the venture.
