British Airways has confirmed that its first aircraft equipped with high-speed Starlink Wi-Fi will take off in March, although further details of the rollout remain elusive, for now, at least.
The latest update came from British Airways chief executive Sean Doyle in an internal memo sent to British Airways to mark the airline’s financial results for 2025.
Doyle noted that the airline was “making excellent progress” in its Starlink rollout despite the fact that the system hasn’t yet been installed on any aircraft.
“This is a complex and highly-skilled upgrade to our fleet, and I want to thank all our teams who are working hard to make this possible,” Doyle added. “I know our customers will be looking forward to using this service soon.”
British Airways first announced a fleet-wide Wi-Fi upgrade contract with Elon Musk’s Starlink internet service in November 2025 as part of a wider deal with the airline’s parent company, IAG.
The deal will see Starlink installed on all IAG-owned airlines, including Aer Lingus, Iberia, LEVEL, and Vueling.
Starlink will be free for all customers on British Airways, Aer Lingus, and Iberia, while it’s understood that IAG has struck a deal with Starlink to charge for the service on its low-cost airlines, Vueling and LEVEL.
Although we knew that IAG planned to start its fleetwide Starlink rollout in early 2026, the Madrid-based company hadn’t disclosed any further details.
It looks like British Airways will have one of the first, if not the first, aircraft in the IAG portfolio kitted out with Starlink. Doyle has previously commented that the hopes of the arrival of free and fast Starlink internet on short-haul flights will “really differentiate us from our competitors.”
While there won’t be much differentiation between rivals like Air France and Lufthansa, who are also racing to equip their aircraft with Starlink, the service will add an edge for British Airways over budget airlines like Ryanair and EasyJet.
Last month, Ryanair got into a major spat with Elon Musk over its refusal to even consider Starlink, amidst claims that the service would add a 2% fuel penalty due to the weight and drag of the antenna.
Musk got into a heated public argument with Ryanair’s famously outspoken chief executive, Michael O’Leary, with the tech billionaire threatening to buy the Irish budget carrier so that he could put someone called ‘Ryan’ in charge.
Other airlines that are already progressing well with their Starlink rollouts, including United Airlines and Qatar Airways, have discovered that installing the equipment is a much faster process than legacy Wi-Fi systems.
Using a so-called ‘constellation’ of low-earth orbit satellites, Starlink offers high-speed, low-latency broadband quality Wi-Fi nearly everywhere in the world. Unlike other Wi-Fi systems, Starlink can be used gate-to-gate by all passengers, for free and on multiple devices.
