(Photo by Omar Havana/Getty Images)SpaceX has reached a new milestone in expanding Starlink access to the skies. On Thursday, the company reported the satellite internet system is now active on 1,000 planes.
“Tens of millions of passengers now have access to high-speed, low-latency internet from gate to gate,” the company tweeted.
SpaceX hit the milestone after Qatar Airways announced it had completed installing the satellite internet system across 54 Boeing 777 aircraft, which feature free in-flight Wi-Fi for all passengers.
“This milestone makes Qatar Airways the operator of the largest number of widebody aircraft equipped with Starlink technology,” the airline added. Qatar Airways originally estimated it’d take 2 years to install the Starlink hardware across the Boeing aircraft, but the process was completed in only nine months.
Other providers including Hawaiian Airlines, United Airlines, and regional carrier JSX have also been offering Starlink access on their planes. The in-flight Wi-Fi speeds have been beating the competition. An Ookla survey published last month found that both Hawaiian and Qatar Airlines offered the fastest in-flight Wi-Fi, at over 100Mbps in median download rates, compared to other airway providers.
There’s a good chance consumer flyers will encounter the Starlink access over time. In a January progress report, SpaceX said Starlink “was now on contract for installation on over 2,000 additional aircraft.” Qatar Airways itself noted it’s preparing to install Starlink on the company’s Airbus A350 fleet.
But in United Airlines’s case, the company was forced to temporarily halt the free with ads Starlink access after rolling out the service on its Embraer E175 regional jets. “United and Starlink teams are working together to address a small number of reports of static interference during the operation of the Wi-Fi system, which is fairly common with any new airline Wi-Fi provider,” the company told PCMag last month. “We expect the service to be back up and running on these aircraft soon.”
Although United Airlines has reportedly applied a fix, the company hasn’t provided an update on the issue. The Points Guy publication reports that “about a third of affected planes have received the fix and are once again flying with high-speed satellite Wi-Fi.”
In the meantime, United Airlines has told PCMag it expects to install Starlink across its two-cabin regional fleet by the end of the year, despite the interference issue.
Disclosure: PCMag's parent company, Ziff Davis, owns Ookla.