Hawaiian Airlines to offer free Wi-Fi via SpaceX's Starlink

SpaceX will provide free Wi-Fi for passengers flying internationally with Hawaiian Airlines as early as next year, using its Starlink broadband satellite network. The financial terms of this contract were not revealed, and it's the first deal of its kind SpaceX has inked with a major airline. Starlink's wireless internet …

[Mike Lewis]

Opportunity Missed

Decades ago, I was working for a now defunct company developing small base stations for mobile phones. I told my manager "We can put them in airplanes and connect to satellites to get the signal!"

"Don't be ridiculous" he replied.

[wavemobile]

Re: Opportunity Missed

We started off along the same lines... compliance was always an issue though. You need deep pockets to play in the airline industry (particularly if you transmit something!).

[sreynolds]

Re: Opportunity Missed

Who would want 2.5G GPRS networking on a plane. That thing didn't work when you were a few hundred feet from the base station, so I guess you are talking about the 2G stuff which means GSM calls. Don't be ridiculous - did you want to turn a plane into a carriage of a chatty commuters on the train? I didn't think so.

[John Robson]

Only on outbound flights

Aren't all flights outbound from one airport and inbound to another?

[sreynolds]

Re: Only on outbound flights

Not the ones operated by Red Bull Airways.

Most of my flights take off and land on the same runway.

[NoneSuch]

My vacations are to places where Wifi is nonexistent. My phone is turned off, in my bag, for the duration.

The world can live without me for that time.

[John Brown (no body)]

Why not leave it at home and save the effort of taking it, charging it, losing it etc?

[Alan Brown]

Inmarsat/hughes feeling that one

Right now they're charging airlines a LOT for telemetry and data services (as in, "it's a large part of their income stream") - this is why MH311 wasn't providing updates except for the engine telemetry that RR was paying for

Starlink has the potential to not only eat their lunch worldwide whilst the kit to do it draws significantly less power, doesn't need a large drag-inducing blister on the top of the airframe and is notably interference/jam resistant. For them the telemetry traffic is more or less the equivalent of Hologram traffic on most terrestrial networks (ie: negligable). This all adds up to compelling attractions for airlines to ditch the existing satellite data, telemetry and "sat/airfone" services in favour of much cheaper "all in one" options (The USA "airfone" cellular system is hideously expensive and underutilised because of its cost. I can see airline execs gleefully dumping it in favour of low-latency VOIP over LEO - and in any case people will probably be whatsapping instead of using airline handsets)

[Anonymous Coward]

My bet is the first aircraft using starlink will be a Bayraktar drone taking an extended trip from Ukraine to Moscow on May Day to help with the celebrations.

[Starace]

Believe it when I see it

If they haven't already got hardware in place then it's going to come as a shock to all involved just how difficult and expensive it will be to design, produce and qualify the bits for an aircraft.

Even when you already do avionics and related kit this is not a trivial job. And satellite trancievers for aircraft are a particularly nasty problem - I've heard the horror stories.

I have a horrible feeling someone has dived into offering this to customers without anything to back it up and are hoping to wing it as usual. Sadly for some things that doesn't work.

[Oneman2Many]

Re: Believe it when I see it

They have been testing with Delta and I believe USAF. They have also been testing with F9 missions so I would think technically they are confident.

At the they don't have laser link work AFAIK so the plane has to be within 500 miles of a ground station which I thought might be an issue for trans Pacific flight ? Maybe sats in a higher orbit have a larger radius of coverage.

[Oneman2Many]

Re: Believe it when I see it

Forgot add, one hiccup is they will need approval for each type of aircraft, could be time consuming.