(Credit: Alaska Airlines)
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The constellation of airlines offering free in-flight connectivity via SpaceX’s Starlink service will soon include Alaska Airlines.
Alaska announced this plan on Wednesday in one of the less surprising plot twists in commercial aviation. Hawaiian Airlines, which was acquired by Alaska Airlines's parent company last year, began deploying Starlink in February 2024.
Alaska will start offering Starlink connectivity with "speeds up to 500Mbps" in 2026 and finish the rollout across Alaska’s mainline and regional aircraft, plus all of Hawaiian’s planes, by 2027.
“With Starlink already live on Hawaiian Airlines and installations starting this winter across Alaska’s fleet, we’re proud that we’ll offer the fastest, most reliable in-flight internet in the skies – with gate-to-gate connectivity on nearly every aircraft across both airlines,” says Ben Minicucci, CEO and president of Alaska Air Group.
Starlink Wi-Fi, provided via a constellation of more than 8,000 satellites about 350 miles up, will be free on Alaska’s planes, as it has been on every other airline offering Starlink broadband; today, Alaska charges $8 on most of its flights.
Bypass Ads and Connect Immediately (With T-Mobile)
A separate press release announcing T-Mobile’s sponsorship of this connectivity specifies that passengers will need an account in Alaska’s Atmos Rewards frequent-flyer program, itself announced Wednesday as the combined replacement for Alaska’s Mileage Plan and Hawaiian’s HawaiianMiles. (The Atmos moniker bears no relation to the Dolby surround-sound technology, so don’t expect elite status in Atmos Rewards to get you an upgrade to your home theater.)
The T-Mobile-sponsorship post also touts "a seamless, ad-free Wi-Fi log-on" for T-Mobile customers. Those not on T-Mobile will experience what United Airlines now offers on a growing number of regional jets: free Starlink after you watch a few video ads.
T-Mobile subscribers won’t need to plug in their phone number on each flight, as they must today, to get the free in-flight connectivity the carrier already offers as a subscriber benefit.
“T-Mobile customers who link their subscription to their Atmos Rewards account will bypass ads and be connected immediately,” emailed Maria Cid, an airline spokeswoman. She added that passengers won’t need to have their Atmos Rewards number on a flight booking if they would rather credit that trip to another frequent-travel program.
Alaska’s announcements don’t specify which planes will get Starlink first, but its Boeing 737-700 and Embraer E175 aircraft need it most because both offer only what it calls “Basic Wi-Fi.” Alaska’s oldest in-flight Wi-Fi comes via Gogo’s slow air-to-ground service, which the airline began adopting in 2010 and which Gogo plans to shut down early next year.
“Air-to-ground service is expected to end by April 1, 2026,” Cid said. “We plan to upgrade most E175s by then, with 737-700s receiving Starlink starting mid-next year.”
Competition on Land and in the Skies
Alaska will be the third major US airline to adopt Starlink, following in the flight paths of Hawaiian and United; the boutique air service JSX also offers Starlink and was among the earliest operators to roll it out.
Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and other domestic airlines are continuing to rely on Wi-Fi from satellites in geostationary Earth orbit some 22,000 miles up. Those systems can deliver reasonably fast downloads but can't get close to Starlink’s uploads or latency.
Outside the States, Starlink has also won the business of a growing flock of airlines, including plans for fleetwide deployments on the multi-continent carriers Air France, SAS, and Qatar Airways. That last carrier provided my longest Starlink experience so far in February, when I used Starlink during a 12-hour flight from Washington to Doha and recorded average downloads of 108Mbps, uploads of 30Mbps, and ping times of 74ms.
In July, SpaceX announced that Starlink was now active on more than 1,000 planes. However, it does have some competition coming for low-Earth-orbit broadband. Air Canada has begun offering Wi-Fi via OneWeb’s much smaller constellation, and Amazon’s Project Kuiper now has a deal with Airbus to offer connectivity on the European airframer’s planes.
Starlink remains best known for its on-the-ground residential broadband, but that has hit some turbulence lately, including a widespread outage in July and the addition of a $1,000 “demand surcharge” and a waiting list of up to six weeks in parts of the Pacific Northwest.
SpaceX has also found less appetite for its service among state broadband agencies even after the Trump administration–having granted SpaceX CEO Elon Musk an unprecedented amount of power in its early months–directed them to reopen federally funded broadband-buildout programs to reconsider fixed-wireless and satellite alternatives to fiber broadband.
Virginia and Louisiana recently completed those reviews and declined to give Starlink more than a tiny fraction of their subsidies. SpaceX denounced those states, each led by Republican governors, in vituperative terms, calling Virginia’s choice a "massive waste of federal taxpayer money" and decrying Louisiana for proposing "wasteful and unnecessary taxpayer spending."
Michael Kan contributed to this report.