My Experience With United’s Starlink Service: How All In-Flight Wi-Fi Should Be

At a time when our phones and smartwatches have satellite connectivity options — helping us reach emergency responders or send text messages when we’re out of range of a cell signal — Starlink and United are providing travelers with an upgraded convenience. What’s more, we’re getting in-flight Wi-Fi with speeds and connectivity that rival what we experience at home or the office.

The plane I traveled on isn’t the first United aircraft carrying Starlink’s satellite Wi-Fi equipment. United began outfitting many of its regional Embraer E175 jets in March after signing a deal with Starlink’s parent company, SpaceX, last year. Although it’s the inaugural United mainline aircraft, Hawaiian Airlines got the jump late last year when it outfitted its Airbus planes with the technology.

The Boeing 737-800 I flew on went into active service the next day, starting with a leg from Houston to Fort Lauderdale. Over the coming months, United expects to outfit approximately 15 mainline Boeing 737-800 planes per month with Starlink antennas.

United is offering Starlink Wi-Fi access free to United MileagePlus members. The Standard Wi-Fi option costs $8 or 1,600 miles for MileagePlus members, or $10 for everybody else. Subscriptions for frequent travelers start at $49 a month (or 7,500 miles).

In-flight Wi-Fi is all about the experience

Believe me, I want to talk about speeds and bandwidth and what a Starlink connection could mean for getting work done or being entertained in the air. But it all starts with getting connected, and too often, that experience sucks.

On my flight from Seattle to Chicago the day before my demo, United’s Standard Wi-Fi took nearly an hour to connect to any of my devices. (United uses different internet providers depending on the aircraft and operating area, and this flight was connected by satellite internet provider ViaSat.) Once the main menu page loaded, selecting most options, including “sign in” and “free messaging,” timed out with an error that there was no network connection. 

That cut into my work time, but more importantly, it was incredibly frustrating. Many of us look forward to focused time on a flight to get things done without interruptions, and more frustration is the last thing we want to add to our air travel experience.

Two experiences stood out when I was on the Starlink-equipped plane. First, it operates gate-to-gate, so you can connect on your phone or tablet (laptops still need to be put away during takeoff) as soon as you get settled in your seat. After we’d landed and were taxiing back to the gate, I forgot that I was still connected through Starlink. 

Second, the few sign-on steps I had to go through weren’t any more onerous than getting on a public cafe or hotel Wi-Fi network. After connecting to the United Wi-FI network, a portal window opened with a trio of screens explaining how great the new service is (you can skip them) and a field to enter my United MileagePlus account and password.

Once connected, I could concentrate on trying to use as much bandwidth as possible and look outside occasionally since United scheduled this flight on a beautiful autumn day (instead of bringing everyone to Chicago in the dead of winter).

To compare, the antenna module on a non-Starlink-equipped United plane parked at the next gate was much larger to shield its antennas, which need to adjust their angles during flight to talk to high-altitude satellites about 22,000 miles up.