The rollout of ultra-fast Starlink Wi-Fi across British Airways’ fleet has been put on hold until the end of October at the earliest because the airline does not have any leeway to keep aircraft on the ground long enough to install the Wi-Fi hardware while still operating its ambitious schedule.
British Airways made headlines in March when it announced that it had become the first UK-based carrier to offer passengers free, ultra-fast Starlink Wi-Fi that all passengers can access via multiple devices.
In the following few weeks, British Airways managed to install the Starlink service on five of its Boeing 787-8 Dreamliners before the retrofit program suddenly ground to a halt.
It seems increasingly like BA’s intention in starting the rollout was to beat Virgin Atlantic to the punch, although its arch-rival has now installed Starlink on its entire fleet of 12 Airbus A350-1000 aircraft, compared to BA’s five planes with Starlink.
British Airways intends to initially roll out Starlink on its Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, as none of these 12 aircraft have ever had Wi-Fi installed since they were introduced into service up to 12 years ago.
The airline will then move onto its Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner fleet, as some of these also don’t have any Wi-Fi system installed, before the rollout moves onto other aircraft types, including the Airbus A380 superjumbo.
Unfortunately, aircraft that have never had Wi-Fi installed will continue flying for the rest of the summer in this state, as British Airways has reportedly decided that its fleet position isn’t strong enough to allow any downtime for the retrofit work to be completed.
From a technical standpoint, Starlink installation is significantly faster than legacy Wi-Fi systems. As an example of just how quickly the kit can be installed, United Airlines reports that the average installation time for Starlink is a mere eight hours – around 10x faster than legacy systems.
Other airlines, including Qatar Airways, have also praised the Starlink installation time, managing to roll out the equipment on dozens of aircraft in the same time frame it has taken British Airways to equip just five airplanes.
Unfortunately, this delay means that BA’s timeline of completing the Starlink rollout in just two years is already way behind schedule.
British Airways needs to install Starlink on more than 300 aircraft, but without some major changes, the airline will only have completed retrofits to around 20% of its fleet by the March 2028 deadline.
The issue isn’t due to a lack of Starlink kits but rather finding time in its schedule to complete the retrofit work. Even with the continuing Middle East flight suspensions, the British Airways fleet is stretched so thin that it is struggling to find enough time to schedule the retrofits.
British Airways has suffered fleet reliability problems for several years due to ongoing maintenance issues with the Rolls-Royce engines on its Boeing 787 Dreamliner fleet.
Delays in receiving previously ordered Boeing 787-10 Dreamliners, as well as the years-long Boeing 777X certification delay, mean that BA’s long-haul aircraft fleet is smaller than it had hoped. Of course, the decision to retire its aging Boeing 747-400s at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t helped the situation either.
With any luck, the Starlink rollout will commence at the end of the aviation Summer season, which concludes on October 25. Expect Starlink retrofits to resume at this point, but then be suspended during the Christmas and New Year travel rush.
And while Virgin Atlantic has now installed Starlink on more aircraft than BA, it is also understood to have paused its own rollout for the rest of the summer period.
