You do have to attach a pretty sizeable antenna to the top of your plane, plus whatever accompanying wiring is necessary… maybe maintenance capacity is the bottleneck? It’s a little hard to imagine that airlines are bottlenecked by this, since it seems pretty minor compared to other kinds of maintenance planes commonly undergo (like swapping out an engine)? But quotes from this site saying that some airline “hopes to have units installed in at least 25% of their aircraft by the end of 2025”, or that another “expects to ramp that number up to 40 installations per month” suggest that maybe this is the reason why airlines like United, Hawaiian, etc (which have started but not completed their rollouts) aren’t yet at 100%.
maybe starlink has some kind of interconnection queue where they can only ramp up so many users at a time?? but I’d expect that stuff like airlines and cruise ships would be relatively high-paying customers at the front of the line, at least compared to ordinary consumers (who can currently order starlink antennas online for next-day shipping).
probably the airlines themselves are not that motivated to instantly upgrade their fleets, since most people don’t choose flights based on who has the fastest wifi? in a similar way, other in-flight amenities—legroom, seat material, the quality of meals on international flights, how good the little screen for in-flight movies is, etc, are individually not super-important to people; most important is the flight route + flight timing + ticket price.
especially when you consider the fact that Starlink has a monopoly, and is probably charging airlines a profit-maximizing price, meaning that airlines which adopt the new service might not actually see any additional revenue on net even if they can charge slightly higher ticket prices once they have fast wifi. Other airlines are perhaps thinking they should wait until more satellite-internet constellations (like the aforementioned project Kuiper) get off the ground and prices come down?
maybe some budget airlines like Frontier or RyanAir calculate that most of their passengers are cheapskates who wouldn’t pay for fast wifi (either directly or through higher ticket prices)
it does kinda seem weird, though, that this list of airlines doing / considering starlink upgrades doesn’t even contain some of the US’s biggest airlines, like Southwest, Delta, or American. I’d bet they’re maybe waiting for lower prices, but it’s always possible they’re just asleep at the wheel.
I’d personally pay more, endure less convenient timing, and sit in a less comfortable seat if it meant I had fast wifi.
like right now flying is pretty time costly for me because most of my highest value work can only be done with internet, so flying means losing a lot of high productivity hours. fast wifi would mean the only time cost of flying is the tiny bit I spend walking through the airport on either end.
Presumably you’d still feel productivity effects from not having a monitor, having worse ergonomics, etc?
I was surprised to see you say above that you’d anticipate flying way more often! Are there times you’ve wanted to fly recently but held off because you couldn’t spare the lost hours of flying? (I would have expected the bigger barrier to be the loss of productive hours from, say, being out-of-the-office in the destination itself)
I don’t really care that much about not having a monitor. it’s a minor productivity hit, whereas not having reliable vaguely-fast internet completely ruins productivity.
I would absolutely fly so much more. weekend trips become way more feasible if I can fly out on Friday and return on Monday. working remotely but visiting HQ occasionally (or otherwise splitting time between two cities) gets a lot easier, because you no longer lose a day of productivity (or a night of sleep) each time.
dunno! some speculation:
You do have to attach a pretty sizeable antenna to the top of your plane, plus whatever accompanying wiring is necessary… maybe maintenance capacity is the bottleneck? It’s a little hard to imagine that airlines are bottlenecked by this, since it seems pretty minor compared to other kinds of maintenance planes commonly undergo (like swapping out an engine)? But quotes from this site saying that some airline “hopes to have units installed in at least 25% of their aircraft by the end of 2025”, or that another “expects to ramp that number up to 40 installations per month” suggest that maybe this is the reason why airlines like United, Hawaiian, etc (which have started but not completed their rollouts) aren’t yet at 100%.
maybe starlink has some kind of interconnection queue where they can only ramp up so many users at a time?? but I’d expect that stuff like airlines and cruise ships would be relatively high-paying customers at the front of the line, at least compared to ordinary consumers (who can currently order starlink antennas online for next-day shipping).
probably the airlines themselves are not that motivated to instantly upgrade their fleets, since most people don’t choose flights based on who has the fastest wifi? in a similar way, other in-flight amenities—legroom, seat material, the quality of meals on international flights, how good the little screen for in-flight movies is, etc, are individually not super-important to people; most important is the flight route + flight timing + ticket price.
especially when you consider the fact that Starlink has a monopoly, and is probably charging airlines a profit-maximizing price, meaning that airlines which adopt the new service might not actually see any additional revenue on net even if they can charge slightly higher ticket prices once they have fast wifi. Other airlines are perhaps thinking they should wait until more satellite-internet constellations (like the aforementioned project Kuiper) get off the ground and prices come down?
maybe some budget airlines like Frontier or RyanAir calculate that most of their passengers are cheapskates who wouldn’t pay for fast wifi (either directly or through higher ticket prices)
it does kinda seem weird, though, that this list of airlines doing / considering starlink upgrades doesn’t even contain some of the US’s biggest airlines, like Southwest, Delta, or American. I’d bet they’re maybe waiting for lower prices, but it’s always possible they’re just asleep at the wheel.
I’d personally pay more, endure less convenient timing, and sit in a less comfortable seat if it meant I had fast wifi.
like right now flying is pretty time costly for me because most of my highest value work can only be done with internet, so flying means losing a lot of high productivity hours. fast wifi would mean the only time cost of flying is the tiny bit I spend walking through the airport on either end.
Presumably you’d still feel productivity effects from not having a monitor, having worse ergonomics, etc?
I was surprised to see you say above that you’d anticipate flying way more often! Are there times you’ve wanted to fly recently but held off because you couldn’t spare the lost hours of flying? (I would have expected the bigger barrier to be the loss of productive hours from, say, being out-of-the-office in the destination itself)
I don’t really care that much about not having a monitor. it’s a minor productivity hit, whereas not having reliable vaguely-fast internet completely ruins productivity.
I would absolutely fly so much more. weekend trips become way more feasible if I can fly out on Friday and return on Monday. working remotely but visiting HQ occasionally (or otherwise splitting time between two cities) gets a lot easier, because you no longer lose a day of productivity (or a night of sleep) each time.