A V I A T ION T E CH NOL O G Y


WORLDof Wifi From a crawl to a sprint:


how Starlink is revolutionising inflight wifi WORDS CHRIS CHAMBERLIN


ILLUSTRATIONS NATHALIE LEES T


he benefts of infight wif are obvious: work can be relayed, clients can be serviced, colleagues are within reach. Daytime fights on connected aircraft are essentially remote work days and it just makes business travel easier. Even


if you’re not working, improved connectivity means access to live sports and the ability to stay in touch with friends and family. Priceless, especially for those always on the go. Before reliable wif, I’d spend an hour preparing my


laptop with offine work – for every single fight. I’d land, venture to the hotel, and sync my inbox to respond to the day’s messages before settling in. Now we’ve reached the stage where wif is becoming


ubiquitous – it’s anticipated, especially in a business cabin. Soon, it’ll become the norm for every passenger to be online if they wish – and still be getting speeds


that they’d celebrate on the ground. That’s largely thanks to Starlink – a satellite network owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which is facilitating the fastest infight connection speeds ever seen. With Starlink (which has inked deals with the likes


of United Airlines, Qatar Airways, Air France, Air New Zealand and Hawaiian Airlines) bandwidth-intensive tasks like video streaming are effortless, and video calling is a breeze. File downloads and cloud back-ups move from the crawling speeds of yesteryear to a sprint with a podium fnish.


Browsing history Of course, none of this has happened overnight. Back in 2001, Boeing spearheaded the frst commercial infight broadband service. Known as Connexion, it launched in 2004 with Lufthansa as the debut customer. Other carriers quickly followed, with Singapore Airlines,


DECEMBER 2024/JANUARY 2025 BUSINESS TRAVELLER 57


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