Pathetic: British Airways Suspends Starlink Wi-Fi Rollout After Five Planes

At the end of the day a smooth operation is more important than Starlink. If I were a customer I would rather feel more confident that my flight won't get cancelled due to aircraft availability than have Wifi. I'm sure having to take aircraft out of service for a period of time to install Wifi creates a lot of complexities.

Air France has successfully managed to install around 60% of its fleet so far and should be 100% by November December

@ Powerball Winner -- Of course, we all want a reliable operation. But somehow most other airlines installing Starlink are able to continue with the project, while British Airways somehow isn't capable of that.

And Delta calls itself a premium Airline and won't have It's high speed wifi installed until 2028 and even that's a stretch!
And it's going with an unproven system

Any chance they’re just waiting out some existing wifi contract?

I’m not sure how, but this article somehow proves that Delta is the best airline in the world.

There are things to get upset about and be annoyed by and things that you have to let slide. Is it annoying that they're sliding? Maybe? Would it impact
My choice of carrier? If I'm going to London? No. Operational integrity for a busy summer schedule is paramount imo. The WiFi will be there eventually and I think most planes have WiFi now? Mine was fine when I flew them a few weeks ago. I don't see this as a big issue. If the WiFi doesn't work I can deal. I'm connected enough and I always have books or something else to occupy my time

As Ben says, it’s an 8-10 hour job (I’ve been in the hangar in Doha watching it get done) and BA does virtually no overnight short haul flying. The aircraft mainly sit at Heathrow whilst the airport is closed. There’s no excuse.

There’s got to be more behind the story, I wouldn’t be surprised if Starlink have advised its customers of price hikes due to high demand. They have done the same to private pilots with costs now in excess of $1k per month up from the offer price of $100. Also these airlines never offer things for free, they are harvesting tons of information on passengers when they log in, email address, what you look at etc, this can be sold to data brokers.

Even if Starlink WiFi can be installed in 8-10 hours, it doesn't mean that BA has the facilities or manpower to install it on top of all of the "routine" things that airlines have to do.

Obviously, BA didn't think this all through but IAG and many European airlines do have good fuel hedges and it makes no sense to refocus efforts on upgrading the procuct at the expense of being able to make money

And it is quite notable the criticism you level at BA about advertising Starlnk that doesn't exist but don't mention United which has been advertising the heck out of Starlink for years. They might get to half of their mainline fleet by the end of the year - but AA, B6 and DL passed that threshold in high speed free WiFi months ago for AA and years ago for B6 and DL.

They will get it sorted out; this will hardly be a nail in BA's coffin.

@ Tim Dunn — I know it’s not convenient for your narrative, but United has been making a good faith effort to install Starlink at a fast pace, which is different than what British Airways is doing.

Regarding marketing, should we talk about Delta’s marketing around free Wi-Fi, and how the timeline keeps getting pushed back?

I am sure UA is moving fairly aggressively but they have been advertising Starlink as "coming" for years already- it will be over 4 years from UA's first ad to full fleet completion.

DL will very likely reach 100% global coverage on all fleets long before UA and perhaps as soon as the end of the year.

Now that we have learned that DL's 717s will have both low and high earth antennas, the first for a commercial aircraft in the US, it makes all the sense in the world why they have waited. The supposed speed advantage that Starlink provides might not exist in reality on a big chunk of DL's fleet.

And Viasat is launching 2 satellites to increase capacity this year.

Let's talk about execution alongside marketing.
DL is delivering more installed and usable WiFi than any other carrier in the world.
You do realize I had a field day on your site this past week from a Delta TATL flight?

Wayne Walter Mitty, as you cannot be trusted not to divert any topic towards your beloved Delta Airlines. Please be advised that I cannot be trusted not to divert any topic towards exposing your shortcomings.

Very true - remember, when you sign-up for "free" stuff like Starlink on a plane you're no longer the customer, you're the product.

Wi-Fi is automatically having a vacant head .

Walter Mitty Dunn, once again makes unsubstantiated claims “Starlink WiFi can be installed in 8-10 hours”. One suspects that he obtained the information from Business Travel News. However, he conveniently failed to provide the full details of the article.

Business Travel News goes on to indicate the “Total aircraft downtime (including removing old equipment if necessary, testing, inspections, paperwork, and returning the aircraft to service): roughly 4 days for United’s Embraer 175 regional aircraft”.

Knowing that BA, carries out such engineering works in a remote location and not LHR, one can fully appreciate why the Starlink rollout might be protected. One has to wonder why Dunn is so economical with the facts and how selective is he with the details of his other posts.

Dunn may have “Worked for Delta Air Lines for more than 30 years as their Information Technologies Analyst”, [source: cityofilburn.com] however, he is clearly not noted for his aeronautical engineering expertise.

Julia, are you Walter Mitty Dunn posing in designer frock old girl?

I suspect not …. just being sarcastic, yes? …. 🙂

@Tim Dunn - you are wrong again. American already uses multi orbit capable satellite provided by SES on their Eagle fleet, long before Delta ever will.

That said GEO is pretty worthless. LEO is king. And Starlink continues to deploy capacity at a rate none of their competitors will ever match.

Wow. Tiny Tim is truly one mentally diminished individual.

Zut alors!!

Dave,
interesting. Do you have a link just for the details?

GEO satellites can handle far more broadband capacity that any Starlink. Two Viasat satellites can cover the Americas.

and as there is more and more demand for Starlink (it's not just airlines) there will be a limit to how many satellites they can launch.

I do appreciate you intelligently engaging in the conversation which is far more than half of the people participating in this conversation are capable of doing.

but then they would need intelligence first.

This could have been explained in fewer words. Why? Why must you not only fill pages to repeat the headline , but also then summarize your lengthy post repeating the headline ? It’s like the 5 paragraph essay I was forced to write in 9th grade!

You're simply wrong on BAs extensive remaining engineering facilities at LHR which is precisely where the few airframes they have fitted Starlink to were serviced.

You clearly don't use BA very much!
Delays and cancellations are par for the course with them

You clearly haven't used BA very much!
They may remember "operational integrity" but haven't delivered it for over two decades!

A definite possibility, it was Musk who insisted it was free to the end users.... and BAs ancillary revenue charges are amongst the highest eg seat choice, even in business

The BA Apologist AeroB13a is quite quiet on this matter.

Or maybe he's busy with his main Delta persona.

BA is totally incompetent with most things, especially any IT-related issue. After several recent 10 hour flights with no working WiFi with them, nothing surprises me.

BA never lets us down in subpar everything, except the ads.

Funny how British Airways is doing “gimmicky” and “pathetic” things - words that would never have been used to describe Emirates’ “gimmickry” and “patheticness”! How many aircraft with new First Class? And not even a timeline to begin with! Horses for courses!

It's a shame for the customers but from BA, they're probably looking at it as a win.
They can proclaim they were the first UK airline with Starlink because of their quick roll out. So much so they even have an advert saying that as you walk through arrivals at Terminal 3 in Heathrow which is the home of Virgin Atlantic.
787-8's that didn't have wifi now have wifi.
They get a summer of extra revenue of passengers paying for wifi during their busiest season.
Marketing and finance departments are all happy.

Yes John, you are correct and I was wrong.

My BA Captain neighbour has corrected his earlier comments about the Starlink rollout at BA. Evidently it was due to take place at the BA facility in Cardiff. However, due to downtime constraints on aircraft, it was switched to LHR.

He believes that the technical staff carrying out the works are being diverted onto other tasks, thereby delaying the rollout further. The buzz is that BA Eng are well behind planned rollout schedules.

Mason, old mucker …. read the posts and learn.

Yes, every day is a school day, some of us are prepared to stand up and be counted when they are wrong. The majority tend to slink away into to bondoo hoping that nobody will remember their faux pas.

P.S. Did I tell you about my recent BA flight down into the Southern Hemisphere? Well, the BA A380 F cabin, was a divine place to masticate one’s thoughts about the future. 🙂

In other news… Just saw on ig that Wizz is getting Starlink in 2027.

@Ben - do you think this will have any impact on Ryanair’s/O’Leary’s hard stance against installing it/clash with Musk on the matter from a few months back?

Tim,

https://runwaygirlnetwork.com/2026/05/american-pivots-to-starlink-for-500-plus-airbus-narrowbodies/
"Separately, SES’s multi-orbit IFC solution, which uses both LEO satellite service from Eutelsat OneWeb and SES GEO service, is installed on American’s two-cabin regional jets"

GEO isn't ideal. The latency is terrible for modern AJAX webpages. It's fine for broadcast video streaming, but that's about it. ~600ms+ vs ~30ms of latency is huge. It also loses coverage above certain latitudes. In other words it's worthless on polar flights. That's where LEO comes in. Up until SpaceX nailed reusability, deploying massive LEO constellations didn't make economic sense. That's why used GEO birds have been used. That whole calculation has changed, and it's why all of these other providers are now racing to do the same. But SpaceX clearly has an outsized advantage being able to use their own rockets to build their constellation. And with Starship and Starlink v3 it will be an order of magnitude higher that current solutions.

STOP IT! This ongoing silly ass issue with more GenXYZLGMX2+ etc on internet is rude.
Relax for one minute, please.
And, also, think about people around you!