American Airlines Going With Starlink for In-Flight Wi-Fi

WASHINGTON, May 27, 2026 – American Airlines is joining the ranks of airlines offering in-flight Starlink broadband. 

The company is planning to upgrade more than 500 Airbus planes to offer the service, the company said Tuesday, work that will begin in the first quarter of 2027. Other major U.S. operators like United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and Alaska Airlines have also struck deals with SpaceX to offer the company’s satellite broadband service.

Service began on United aircraft in May 2025 and Southwest expects its upgrades to be finished by the end of 2026. SpaceX has inked deals with dozens of other airlines in other countries.

A June 2025 Ookla report found Starlink’s low-Earth orbit constellation performed better than in-flight Wi-Fi offered by geostationary satellite operators, topping the research company’s charts with median download speeds of  152 megabits per second. In a more recent study Ookla found Starlink’s median speeds increased over the year.

“We are excited to bring an at-home level of Wi-Fi experience to our narrowbody fleet, enabling our customers to work, game, stream and scroll endlessly,” Heather Garboden, American’s chief customer officer, said in a statement.

An exception is Delta Airlines, which opted to use Amazon Leo, the Starlink competitor the e-commerce giant is working to get off the ground. Elon Musk, who controls SpaceX, wasn’t happy about that and posted on X, which he also owns, that SpaceX took issue with various requirements Delta wanted to impose.

“Starlink WiFi must just work effortlessly every time, as though you were at home,” he wrote. “Delta wanted to make it painful, difficult and expensive for their customers. Hard to see how that is a winning strategy.”

The airline told multiple media outlets that was “not accurate” and that its user portal would have met SpaceX’s demands. The company said it went with Amazon for multiple reasons, including an existing partnership with Amazon Web Services.

Delta’s Amazon Leo service is planned to be active in 2028. Amazon has roughly 300 satellites in orbit and has yet to offer commercial service. SpaceX has nearly 10,000 Starlink satellites.

Both companies were major winners in the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program and committed to service more than 400,000 rural homes and businesses each.