Late last week, United Airlines announced United Airlines announced it has signed a deal with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to bring its Starlink internet service to its entire fleet and, for the first time, offer free Wi-Fi to all passengers. To dig a little deeper into why United chose Starlink, what that rollout will look like, and what it means for passengers and crew, we spoke with United’s chief customer officer. Cute Jojo.
“If I could have made this change sooner, I definitely would have, because we’re proud of a lot of things, but we believe our customers deserve a better Wi-Fi experience than they have today,” Jojo told me when I asked why the company is switching providers now.
Currently, United uses a combination of four different suppliers — Gogo, Thales, Panasonic and Viasat — all with different capabilities and limitations. You might find yourself on one flight that lets you stream video, for example, while the connecting flight only allows basic internet browsing. While the airline has attempted to unify these systems behind a single login experience, Jojo admitted that it’s not always possible to shield customers from the underlying complexity.
Meanwhile, the expectation, partly created by United competitors such as Delta Air Linesis that Wi-Fi on flights should be free. However, United's current set of providers simply did not have the capacity that would have allowed it to offer free Wi-Fi to all passengers on the plane, Jojo said.
“If we had gone with the free option, we would have had a worse experience than we had with the paid option, because the paid option only created enough friction ($8 for a MileagePlus member) to say, ‘I’m going to be really intentional about connecting,’” he said. “We know that the current architecture and setup isn’t going to be good enough.”
The search for a better solution led United to consider low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites. These, by definition, are closer to the aircraft than those in a geostationary orbit and can therefore offer lower latencies, more capacity and higher speeds. And when it comes to offering satellite internet access with global coverage and sufficient bandwidth, Starlink is virtually the only option available.
“If we were going to test it, we were going to test it with Starlink,” Jojo said. “We first started looking at it for our regional fleet to see if we were going to test it. And we quickly said, ‘There’s nothing to test here. We can see that it’s going to work.’ We were able to see what JSX And others were doing it. We could tell from where the satellites were that the coverage was there.”
Earlier this year, United began negotiations with Starlink to incorporate its hardware into its planes. Jojo noted that since other airlines like Hawaiian (which is now merging with Alaska Airlines) are going through a similar process right now, that should also speed up the certification process.
Interestingly, United plans to complete the modifications over two days, and may even split them into two parts: The process begins when the plane is at the base for one night, is suspended when the plane takes flight for the day, and is completed on the second night. Normally, a process like this would take place during a more complex maintenance overhaul that lasts several days (and sometimes that can be the best time to install Starlink hardware).
It turns out that the current satellite terminal is much smaller and easier to install than the ones United currently uses. “It’s another great example of Starlink being amazing. It’s very well designed. It’s a very simple product. It’s much simpler than what we already have on the airplane,” Jojo said. “The (satellite systems that use) geostationary orbits have moving parts inside them. The antennas track the satellites while the airplane is flying. Starlink doesn’t need that. There are no moving parts inside the Starlink modules anymore. It’s very modular.”
Still, with over 1,000 aircraft, this rollout will take some time, and if there's one thing Jojo stressed during our conversation, it's that he'd love to see it move as quickly as possible. Still, the first passenger flight with Starlink Wi-Fi won't take off until sometime in 2025.
United is going through this process while also giving its Cabins to cool offwith the return of seatback screens that disappeared a decade or so ago. The idea here is to make those systems smarter and more powerful too once they connect to the faster, more reliable Wi-Fi network.
“We had been thinking about improving the Wi-Fi experience throughout this process,” Jojo said of the cabin revamp. “If anything, the Wi-Fi part is an immediate continuation of the backrest part, so we’re just going to catch up and move forward.”
That may mean being able to start watching a movie during the first flight and then continue that movie on the connecting flight. It may mean simply being able to log into your Netflix account to watch a movie, but United may also consider offering a more interactive experience on seatback screens, or perhaps multi-screen gaming experiences that also use your smartphone.
United is already using their existing networks to help its crew communicate with each other and with their ground teams. With Starlink up and running, they’ll be able to move from text messaging to using video and voice — both to talk to each other and to send a video of some equipment that will need repair after landing, for example. Because modern aircraft are packed with sensors, the equipment can also transmit more of that back to the ground in real time, including for preventative maintenance.
(tags to translate)Starlink