American Airlines May Install Starlink Wi-Fi Fleetwide, An Easy Win Against Delta

American Airlines is trying to improve at the moment, given nearly a decade of neglect by the company’s management team. While things are moving in the right direction, the issue is that it’s hard to catch up when competitors are also improving, and you’re so far behind. That’s especially true in the airline industry, where many initiatives take years to roll out.

Along those lines, American might be nearing an announcement that seems like it should be pretty obvious…

American may expand Starlink Wi-Fi to all aircraft

Over the summer, American announced plans to introduce Starlink Wi-Fi starting in 2027. The catch is that American officially only plans to introduce the service on all Airbus A320-family aircraft. This includes more than 500 planes, comprised of A319s, A320s, A321s, A321neos, and A321XLRs.

I found it very strange how the airline only committed to introducing Starlink on those planes. The passenger experience upgrade with Starlink is huge, and American should be installing it on all planes. That’s especially true when you consider that United is introducing Starlink throughout its fleet, and plans to wrap up the project by the end of 2027.

My guess is that American had some contracts with other providers that might’ve been hard or expensive to get out of, and maybe that’s why the Starlink announcement was initially limited to those planes.

Well, JonNYC is reporting that American is expected to also introduce Starlink on the rest of its mainline fleet, including Boeing 737s, Boeing 777s, and Boeing 787s. Now, let me emphasize that American hasn’t officially confirmed this, and even JonNYC notes that this is unconfirmed. That being said, he has great sources, and my assumption would be that this is accurate. So if I were a betting man, I’d say that this is highly likely to be confirmed soon.

This is finally an easy win for American against Delta

As I said above, part of American’s issue is that no matter how many positive announcements it makes, it’s really only catching up with Delta and United, and for many changes we’re talking about a horizon of many years.

So while it’s great to improve tech, lounges, cabins, etc., that only gets you so far when competitors are doing the same, and are several steps ahead. United certainly isn’t letting American gain any ground.

However, American announcing an aggressive Starlink rollout would probably be the single best thing that the airline could do to increasingly compete with Delta, at least from a passenger experience standpoint. Delta has made the silly decision to not introduce Starlink, as it instead plans to partner with Amazon Leo.

The issue is that Amazon Leo is only launching as of 2028 (best case scenario), and Delta has also only committed to installing it on part of its fleet. Delta CEO Ed Bastian has been getting some bad press over his alleged comments about Elon Musk.

It sure seems to me like American putting effort into installing Starlink fleetwide at a lightning fast pace could be the single biggest “quick” thing the airline could do to level up, and gain a major competitive advantage over Delta. Delta has really self-owned by not committing to Starlink. I hope American takes the easy win here…

Bottom line

American Airlines is reportedly nearing an announcement to install Starlink Wi-Fi on all aircraft, rather than just on roughly 500 Airbus A320-family aircraft. As American tries to become more competitive, introducing legitimately high speed Wi-Fi from Starlink across the fleet is the obvious move.

Unlike many other changes at American, this could actually lead to a competitive advantage, given how Delta is falling behind with Wi-Fi.

What do you make of the prospect of American introducing Starlink fleetwide?