British Airways has revealed more details about the rollout of free, ultra-fast Starlink Wi-Fi across its fleet, with the first airplane with the new service now taking to the skies after being retrofitted with the new antenna that enables broadband-quality internet.
The first aircraft to have Starlink installed is a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner (registration: G-ZBJJ), which is believed to have undergone the refit process at BA’s Heathrow engineering base between February 28 and March 14.
Since then, the seven-year-old plane has flown a few return flights to Mumbai, Montreal, and Cincinnati. In the next few days, the aircraft is also due to fly to Houston and Mumbai.
British Airways plans to initially roll out Starlink on the rest of its Boeing 787-8 fleet, which makes complete sense given the fact that these planes have never had Wi-Fi installed.
Hopefully, this means that the engineering team can quickly get to grips with the Starlink installation process before moving on to the more complicated process of ripping out old Wi-Fi systems and refitting them with Starlink.
Once the Boeing 787-8 refits are completed, British Airways will move onto the rest of its fleet. Presumably, the next stage will involve installing Starlink on a handful of larger Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners that also have never had a Wi-Fi system installed.
British Airways has given a tentative timeline of up to three years for Starlink to be installed across its entire fleet, including its flagship Airbus A380s and its short-haul fleet of narrowbody A320 series aircraft.
As part of the deal with the Elon Musk-owned Starlink company, British Airways will make the new Wi-Fi service available to all passengers for free on multiple devices.
The agreement is part of a wider deal with BA’s parent company, the Madrid-headquartered IAG group, which also owns Aer Lingus, Iberia, Vueling, and LEVEL.
Starlink will be rolled out across all IAG airlines, although it’s understood that the internet service will be a paid-extra on its low-cost brands Vueling and LEVEL.
British Airways is in a race to install Starlink as Air France, Lufthansa, and SAS have all selected the service to power their in-flight Wi-Fi services. So far, however, Air France is the only European competitor to start the rollout, initially focusing on its short-haul fleet.
On North American routes, British Airways is going up against United Airlines, which has been rolling out Starlink on regional and narrowbody planes for more than a year. United has yet, however, to start the refit process on its widebody planes that crisscross the Atlantic Ocean.
British Airways hopes Starlink will “really differentiate” it from rivals, especially in the European short-haul market, where the airline goes up against the likes of Ryanair, which has refused to even entertain the idea of installing Starlink.
Earlier this year, Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary got into a very public spat with Elon Musk over Starlink after the 64-year-old airline exec claimed the service would add a 2% fuel penalty due to the weight and drag of the antenna, and that it just wasn’t something that his passengers were willing to pay for.
Musk dismissed O’Leary’s claims and even threatened to buy Ryanair to put the famous Irish businessman out of a job.
Starlink uses a so-called ‘constellation’ of low-earth orbit satellites to provide super-fast, low-latency Wi-Fi to nearly all four corners of the world. The system is fast becoming the de facto in-flight Wi-Fi service as airlines ditch legacy products from Panasonic and Thales.
The only real competitor to Starlink is the Jeff Bezos-owned Leo service but, so far, only JetBlue has signed up as a customer. Leo faces an uphill battle to win over more customers, given the fact that it is still launching satellites into space to make the system work.
If things do go to plan, JetBlue is hopeful that it can activate Leo at some point in 2027.
