Starlink is spreading its wings. British Airways and four other airlines in the International Airlines Group fleet will be adding the satellite internet service to hundreds of their aircraft starting in early 2026.
The Starlink in-flight Wi-Fi will be implemented on more than 500 Boeing and Airbus SE planes for Aer Lingus, British Airways, Iberia, Level and Vueling, and will be available on transatlantic and global routes as well as short-haul flights in Europe.
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Locating local internet providers
Starlink is already available on United Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, Alaska Airlines, airBaltic, Air France, Qatar Airways and WestJet. SAS, Air New Zealand and JSX have also said they will be implementing the service.
Connecting to the internet during flights is changing rapidly. Starlink continues to expand to various airlines, but it will face competition from Amazon's Project Kuiper, which plans to deploy thousands of low-orbiting satellites. Amazon has already partnered with JetBlue to equip some of its planes with Kuiper technology.Â
Locating local internet providers
Aside from the Musk-Bezos options, there iare many ways to get in-flight Wi-Fi on the major US carriers, as we detail here.Â
IAG said its fleet for all five of its airlines consists of 601 planes, and that each airline will determine its own rollout plans for Starlink. IAG's airlines, based in Spain, the UK and Ireland, fly 122 million customers to 260 destinations across 91 countries each year, the company said.
In terms of cost, a representative for IAG told CNET that the company is not yet sharing details about how the service would be priced for passengers.
IAG CEO Luis Gallego said the company is trying to keep up with the internet demands of its passengers.
"Staying connected in the skies is increasingly important to our airlines' customers. The introduction of high-speed Wi-Fi from Starlink will transform onboard connectivity, improving both the connection speed and reliability for customers," Gallego said.
Great news for flyer Wi-Fi?
CNET's Jeff Carlson tested out Starlink in flight and was impressed. Video call quality was "even better than a few recent calls we've had in our respective offices," he said, and initiating the connection was as simple as you'd find in a coffee shop or hotel. Carlson says he was consistently getting 250Mbps of download speed, compared to the 10Mbps he was getting on United's standard Wi-Fi access on a flight the previous day.
It's also been shown that Wi-Fi speeds from in-flight Starlink internet are actually faster than you might get at home. If that seems counterintuitive, consider that Starlink's fleet of 7,000 low-Earth orbit satellites are a lot closer to your in-flight connection than the 22,000 miles that separate your connection at home with geostationary satellites.