Singapore Airlines Rolling Out Free Starlink Wi-Fi, With A Major Catch

"Disappointing" is being a little dramatic since their current wifi is good, maybe not Starlink good, but decent even across the Pacific.

Now if you were talking about Delta and their "premium" 767s 🙂 that have no wifi service across the Pacific then you would be spot-on.

@ BeachBoy -- Hey, I respect your take, but Singapore Airlines is regarded as one of the best airlines in the world, and very high speed Wi-Fi is quickly becoming the norm at this point. Of the dozens of airlines that have announced plans to introduce Starlink, Singapore Airlines has the least comprehensive rollout plan, so I do find that to be a bit disappointing.

But you're right, the state of the carrier's Wi-Fi is quite good, at least by current standards.

The only real benefit Starlink will bring over SQ's existing service is the elimination of the dark spots in the Southern Indian Ocean where their current providers don't have coverage. I've had 1-2 hours of no coverage when flying JNB-SIN and vv in recent months.

A few quick takes:

-It's probably safe to say that the 77Ws won't be getting any additional upgrades as they'll be retired in favour of the 779. (Unless of course they trickle down as a regional aircraft but that's unlikely)
-I anticipate the 779s to also get Starlink.
-The medium-haul fleet will probably get a separate provider the same way the medium-haul A350s have Thales for their IFE while the rest of their fleet has Panasonic. I guess it's to avoid relying on a sole vendor, better pricing, etc.

Sean, a very interesting observation, thank you.

Our usual SQ flights are LHR-SIN and beyond. I have no experience of their JBN-SIN service, must try it someday after one of our RSA jaunts. Anymore tips?

How come it is taking Air France around a year to install starlink, with around 50 pct of its fleet already completed. They have a significantly larger fleet.

My guess is that the 777-9s will also have Star Link installed, and Singapore is hedging the time-frame to include them as well. But Singapore doesn't want to say any of that in their P.R., since they still don't know when they'll actually start getting those aircraft.

I won't call it "only real benefit" when the entire experience is vastly different even when connection is robust.

Disappointing to see the medium haul fleet—which will be around for a long time—will most likely not get Starlink at all. Wild to think UA narrowbody domestic flights will get better wifi than medium hall SQ widebodies??

I would suspect, besides the aging B77W fleet, they are prioritizing the long-haul fleet, where passengers would find a faster Wi-Fi more of a game changer, than on shorter flights on their regional configuration planes.

*medium haul not hall. I can certainly excuse the 77Ws but the 787-10s & medium haul A359s especially are absurd

Yeah, call us when you’re CEO of a big company and have to make investment and timeline decisions. Then we’ll see if it’s “disappointing” or not

Sounds like they are installing this when they install the new seats.

Yeah, nitpick about word choice when you are running a successful blog. Then we'll see if anyone cares about your nonsense complaints.

Whether it's Starlink or another provider, thanks to advances in technology, all airlines should be able to provide free, reliable WiFi to all passengers. Those that do not are simply being cheap. SQ already had some WiFi (like, I recall some for J passengers on SQ21,22,23,24 on the a359ULR), so any improvements for all other aircraft are also welcome, as long as it may take.

While agree it's "disappointing", I can see how the slow rollout is also a reasonable business decision. It's precisely because SQ has such a great product that they can have one minor component of it be substandard for a while. Not *absent*, just wifi that's not as fast and nice as the current product. I'm guessing SQ figures it can save some money by doing the rollout gradually, and the loss of paying passengers will be minimal to none.

So there will be no opportunity for economy and premium economy class passengers without a Krisflyer membership to have Internet, (not even a paid one)

But since Krisflyer is free to join, and takes 5 minutes to do so, why would anyone care? Have enough common sense to use a burner email, if you don't care about keeping it.

I can think of an explanation. Several countries in Asia ban Starlink when overflying their airspace. This may be the reason of not installing Starlink on regional A350s and 787s and 737s.

As for 777s, most of them are going to be retired as soon as 779s start coming up.

The article lacks to mention about the current coverage and it being better than most current providers.

I'm Solitaire and fly SQ a lot. The current wifi leaves a lot to be desired with huge blackspots over parts of Asia, Middle-East and Northern Australia. When it does work it's often frustrating slow and regularly drops out. So going to StarLink is a huge improvement.

It's disappointing they won't install on the current 777s as this is what they mostly use for Europe and half of Australia flights. Understandable if it's going to be installed on the 777-9s but who knows when these will come. If it's years then that's a big loss for the current 777 workhorses not getting the upgrade.

Once it's installed hopefully SQ put in place a clear and enforced headphones only and no phone calls / video conferencing rule . More and more obnoxious people are taking loud WhatsApp (and other) calls on SQ and staff don't seem ready to deal with the disruption to the rest of the cabin.

I think the exclusion of mid-haul aircraft is likely due to the lack of Starlink over Chinese and Indian airspace. ~3hr of a 5hr flight PEK-SIN with no internet whatsoever is a huge annoyance. This is a problem on certain QR routes, like PVG-DOH, where the aircraft has almost no internet until a couple of hours before landing.