Next year, American Airlines passengers might actually get decent internet.
Well, next next year.
The airline announced a deal with SpaceX. It’s about Starlink. That Elon Musk thing. American is outfitting its entire Airbus fleet—over 500 planes—with the satellite gear by 2027.
The Tech Specs
Let’s be honest, flying usually means staring at a window. Or trying to load a webpage and giving up.
Starlink isn’t like the old stuff.
It uses low Earth orbit satellites. More than 10k of them. They hover way closer than traditional geostationary satellites, which slashes the lag. The speed? Allegedly nearly double the nearest competitor. Sometimes it feels like you’re still at home.
CNET writer Jeff Carlson flew United and was blown away. He wrote that minus the cabin roar and the turbulence, it felt exactly like his home fiber connection.
“Honestly, I’d think Iwas at home on my high-speed fiber…”
Does your laptop need more? You work on the cloud now. You stream Netflix. The bandwidth is there.
The Rivalry
This isn’t just any airline.
American is huge. When they jump in, it makes the win for SpaceX massive. Alongside United, Southwest, and Alaska, SpaceX will have gear on 2,300+ commercial aircraft once this rolls out.
But there is a gap. A big one.
Delta.
The other giant is skipping SpaceX. Delta is betting on Amazon’s Project Kuiper instead. CEO Ed Bastian said it straight to Bloomberg: Amazon is cheaper. It also bundles streaming content. Smart business. Maybe smarter tech, or just different priorities.
The IPO Elephant
Timing is interesting here.
SpaceX filed for an IPO just days before this deal broke. The valuation? Nearly $2 trillion. If they pull off raising $75 billion, it shatters IPO records. It makes Musk the first real trillionaire.
Merging with xAI recently didn’t hurt their narrative either.
Replicated for SpaceX? Replicated for American Airlines? Silence so far.
No comment yet.
So we wait. 2027 feels far away, doesn’t it. Or maybe it will blink by in the time it takes to watch three seasons of a show. Assuming the Wi-Fi works.
