Etihad and Korean Air keen to get online, to name a few. Impressively, this all took place before the iPhone was even invented in 2007. I still recall the early days of excitedly noticing the
infight hotspot. Connecting back then was such a treat; an unexpected aid to my effciency – though glacial speeds were still the norm. It would take until 2013 for something better. That’s
when JetBlue signed a deal with ViaSat. The year prior, ViaSat put a new satellite into service: ViaSat-1, capable of a 25Mbps link to the aircraft. Compared to 2004-era technology, this increased speeds more than tenfold, allowing more passengers to surf simultaneously and providing the smoother service you get today. Starlink’s services meanwhile exceed 200Mbps – offering a faster connection than I have at my own house.
Better than legroom In a 2023 ViaSat survey of 11,000 fyers, 80% said that infight wif was important at the booking stage, while almost a third would pay more for their airfare if it included free wif on the journey. After overall price, wif ranked higher than anything else for those surveyed. Some airlines debate between offering free or paid
wif. For others, it’s a question whether to even offer it at all – but traveller trends are changing that. “I don’t think we were losing sales by not having wif,”
says Avi Mannis, senior executive at Hawaiian Airlines, which recently adopted Starlink. “But it was a real disappointment for people when
they got on board to fnd there was no signal.” As for cost: “My view is the reason that most airlines
charge for it is not to recover the cost, because you don’t. It’s because with the last-generation technology, if everyone uses it at the same time, it would break down and be too slow.” This is where Starlink has carved out its niche.
Beam me up, Starlink So, how does infight satellite connectivity work? Let’s talk simple tech. Your phone connects to the plane’s hotspot – straightforward enough. The aircraft has an antenna on its roof, beaming your data onwards to satellites. These relay signals between the aircraft and Earth. But here’s the thing. Some satellites orbit roughly
21,000 miles above the Earth. That means your data needs to travel the equivalent length of a return trip from London to Sydney, just to get from your plane up to the satellite. It needs to travel that distance again to get back down to Earth: and that all takes place within a few seconds. We may complain of slow infight wif speeds, but the concept remains rather amazing. Starlink differs because its satellites hover around 330 miles above Earth. There’s far less latency, because the distance your data travels is cut by 98%. Starlink also has over 6,400 satellites pumping out a combined 480Tbps of throughput. That’s roughly 60,000,000MB/s. Given that HD video only needs ~5Mbps to stream smoothly, you can see the potential for infight video calling. Qatar Airways demonstrated this on its frst Starlink-equipped fight in October 2024, when its CEO held an infight video chat with Elon Musk, founder of Starlink’s parent company SpaceX.
58 BUSINESS TRAVELLER
‘ Starlink’s services offer a faster connection than I have at my own house’
Even so, speed isn’t the only thing that airlines want. Flexibility has also been a sticking point, but other new tech is opening doors. Traditionally, airlines have one wif provider per plane and install custom hardware to suit, a process that can take up to two weeks while the plane sits grounded and doesn’t come cheap. Airbus wants to change that through its new HBCplus
system. With HBCplus, airlines will be able to switch infight wif providers like we toggle between eSIMs on our smartphones – bringing more competition on speed, price and service. It’s early days, but Emirates and Ethiopian Airlines have already signed up for HBCplus on the A350.
Avoid the fee, browse for free Starlink wasn’t the catalyst for free infight wif. Emirates took the lead in 2014, unlocking the service for all, but speeds quickly crumbled. I recall waiting 29 minutes for
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