How Elon Musk’s Starlink is leading the airline Wi-Fi revolution

Thanks to ongoing improvements around satellite technology, you can now surf the internet while flying

Is decent in-flight internet just a pipe dream? Regular flyers will know that, for much of the past decade, the promise of airline Wi-Fi has proved frustratingly underwhelming in practice – with connections either slow or expensive, or not even offered in the first place.
Unlike just about everything else to do with travel, though, airline Wi-Fi has actually improved since the pandemic, with surveys suggesting more travellers are now expecting to get online. 
Of the various long-haul carriers I’ve used in the past year, nearly all of them have had decent enough internet coverage (comparable to a smartphone) – even if the short-haul ones rarely do.
Why the sudden improvement? Naturally, the big shift has been the technology. Whereas plane Wi-Fi used to come from air-to-ground systems plagued by black spots and spotty connections, the newer model is built on higher-speed satellite connections which offer round-the-globe connectivity and can handle more devices connecting at once.
Perhaps the best-known of the providers is Elon Musk’s Starlink. But there are other operators too, including Viasat, which has a major operation in London. How big a deal is the satellite revolution? 
A US airline (Hawaiian) using Starlink has demonstrated speeds of 100 megabits per second – around 50 per cent faster than the average UK broadband connection. 
Airlines are certainly talking a big game when it comes to satellite internet. Emirates now offers passengers the chance to stream some Premier League football games. Not bad given that, this time ten years ago, you’d have been lucky to even be able to check the score. Meanwhile, Air France wants its entire fleet on Starlink next year.
Should we all expect to cruise the web at speed on our next fleet? Not so fast. For a start, it depends on who you’re flying with. As anyone who uses them will know, Europe’s big three budget airlines – Ryanair, easyJet, Wizz Air – are still stubbornly offline, having never operated a single flight offering internet connectivity.
Why are they such luddites? Plenty of airlines elsewhere use exactly the same planes as Ryanair et al and have upgraded them to receive Wi-Fi. Yet of the three of them, only Wizz Air says it is currently considering offering internet connectivity, with Ryanair and easyJet happy to subject passengers to a mandatory digital detox.
Even if you’re flying with full-service carriers, you may not get online. While carriers like BA are working to upgrade all of their planes to receive Wi-Fi, there are still gaps within their fleet. What happens if you end up getting stuck on one of the duff planes for a ten-hour flight? From what I can gather, there’s no fare discount or compensation – you’ll just have to put up with it.
Even if you get the right plane, there are still questions about the speed you will get. Satellite internet might be the default these days, but few airlines have made the jump to the very latest models offering the kind of turbo-speeds seen on Hawaiian Airlines. What will you get instead?
Perhaps understandably, airlines aren’t making too many promises on download speed. BA and Virgin Atlantic will only say that they can vary throughout the flight. Etihad says that passengers typically receive speeds of up to 7 megabits per second. For reference, that’s very probably slower than your home broadband, but perfectly fast enough to browse the web with ease (even if streaming videos will be a slog).
Then there’s the final question: just how much will you have to pay for the privilege of getting online? Again, airlines can be a little opaque, usually adjusting the price depending on the length of the flight and your membership status. As a rule of thumb, though, you can expect to pay £20 or more for connectivity during a long-haul flight, unless you’ve been racking up lots of loyalty points.
Given that Hawaiian Airlines is currently offering Starlink for free, I can see why some might grumble. But then again, maybe flyers will be more accepting of these things, given that our biggest hotel chain, Premier Inn, still charges for decent Wi-Fi. No wonder the airlines think they can get away with it too.
As someone who places a big premium on getting connected on long flights, I’ve usually been prepared to pay up – not least as it’s always been easy enough to get a refund when the Wi-Fi has been patchy (just take timed screenshots of the various error screens on their browser and email them to customer services afterwards).
In truth, satellite connectivity has hopefully made that particular issue redundant. But it’s still worrying that European airlines (with some honourable exceptions) don’t seem to be showing the same kind of ambition as their US and Asian counterparts on this front. I’d hate to see our continent become a backwater on these things.
But let’s not get too ahead of ourselves. Right now, the verdict is cautiously positive when it comes to in-flight Wi-Fi (at least with the long-haul carriers). To use a metaphor that frequent flyers will understand, I see the situation as like the five-hour point in the typical Transatlantic flight. Sure, there is some way to go before we reach our preferred destination. But my goodness, we have come a long way.