(Credit: Rob Pegoraro)
LOS ANGELES—If you have a complaint about in-flight service on United Airlines, you should have zero issues sharing it on social media from a chair in the sky by the end of next year. However, United’s management hopes that the upgrades shown off over two days at Los Angeles International Airport this week will leave no ground for gripes.
Connecting and Charging
Fast, free Wi-Fi via SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation is central to this strategy. United began installing Starlink on regional jets last spring, has since put it on every "RJ" with a two-class cabin, and is now adding it to mainline jets; 17 Boeing 737s fly with it.
The Chicago-based carrier hosted a press flight on a 737-900ER on Monday afternoon out of LAX. The experience matched that of previous United flights with Starlink, including the need to sign in to its MileagePlus program and sit through two video ads.
But with 120 or so people aggressively testing the Wi-Fi, the speeds were slower: an average of 38.3Mbps for downloads and 21Mbps for uploads over 10 runs of Ookla’s Speedtest web app. (PCMag’s parent firm Ziff-Davis owns Ookla.)
That was still good enough for every app I tested, including streaming video from Netflix and YouTube; the latter treated me to a livestream of LAX operations showing our own landing. It was all vastly better than the slow, balky Wi-Fi on the Boeing 757-300 that I had taken from Washington that morning. (TechRadar editor Jacob Krol, however, reported that he couldn’t get a Nintendo Switch 2 to connect; United is working on a fix.)
United plans to start installing Starlink on Airbus A321 narrowbody jets next, followed by widebodies beginning in May. It plans to finish upgrading its fleet by the end of 2027.
Most mainline United jets provide power outlets and USB-A ports for charging, but on upcoming aircraft, it will switch to USB-C and add Qi wireless charging surfaces in most premium cabins. If you’ve struggled to reach the power outlets stuffed in a back corner of its current premium-economy seat, good news: They’ll move to the front.
Screens and Personalization
Two years after it committed to putting screens at every mainline seat, including support for Bluetooth headphones, United began installing 4K screens in 2023. Those displays keep getting bigger: On a new Boeing 787-9 shown off Tuesday in a hangar at LAX, they ranged from 13 inches in economy to 27 inches in the bougiest business-class seats, all OLED.
Airline executives emphasized that these displays aren’t just for movies, TV shows, and the in-flight map; they can also help United stay in touch with passengers. "We have an incredible canvas of untapped potential," said tech SVP Grant Milstead.
On some UA flights, the seatback screen may already show your first name after you tap a button to start using it. The one time I’ve seen this, no further personalization followed—not even the targeted advertising included in United’s business plans. Milstead, however, showed how the screen could display a birthday greeting, a notification that checked bags are being loaded, and details about a connecting flight.
Also on United’s screen roadmap: saving content you’ve set as favorites from one flight to the next, and remembering a setting to not show your name on the screen. The airline is also working to expand its current, limited integration with Spotify to let passengers link their Spotify accounts and tune into their own playlists.
Apps and AI
United also spent time talking up plans for passengers’ smaller screens, in the form of the mobile app that handles booking, trip management, and more. For example, it lets you skip signing into MileagePlus on a laptop to use Starlink by instead scanning a QR code shown on the laptop’s screen.
On Tuesday afternoon, airline executives explained how the app can ease travel anxiety by showing exact directions between connections—and eventually, if you’ve given the app location permissions, notifying a gate agent how close you are. (Feature request for United: Let me authenticate a login on a computer via a push notification to the app instead of having to wait for multifactor authentication via text.)
United’s app also uses AI to explain flight delays. CEO Scott Kirby, interviewed by former Washington Post transportation reporter Lori Aratani onstage Tuesday morning, said that AI lets it scale up, informing passengers what’s holding up a flight. "It's just impractical to do that when you've got 6,000 flights a day," he said. "AI can empower us to do that."
He cited the common scenario of faraway weather causing a delay for passengers looking at clear skies: "I understand, it looks like we're lying." Instead, United’s flight-delay explanation can include a weather radar image showing the line of storms responsible.
CIO Jason Birnbaum said in a presentation that afternoon that the airline plans to add "voice-based AI interactions" and "an entirely agentic shopping experience" that would let passengers have AI agents plan a trip. Caution about that last feature is warranted, even if you’re not a travel control freak like me.
Plans for New Planes
United’s event included two planes parked in its hangar that attendees could walk through, one new and one renovated.
The new part was that 787-9, featuring 64 lie-flat Polaris business-class seats with doors (which will stay locked open pending safety certification), eight larger "Polaris Studio" suites with the biggest screens and, in some cases, a "buddy seat" for a friend (there’s not much personal space left in that situation). This version also includes 35 premium economy seats, two-thirds more than usual.
But it will ship with United’s older satellite Wi-Fi, which, on the older 787-9 that returned me to Washington, was subpar.
The renewed part was a CRJ200 regional jet—a cramped airframe with 50 standard economy seats that frequent flyers call the devil’s chariot"—recast as a CRJ450. That 41-seat version includes seven first-class seats and a closet to stow bags for those passengers, plus 16 Economy Plus extra-legroom seats.
United will also equip the CRJ450 with Starlink Wi-Fi and USB-C power, but it can’t fix this plane’s low ceiling and windows that aren’t high enough on the wall.
Airline execs also touted upcoming A321 versions to replace aging Boeing 757 narrowbodies: a "Coastliner" edition for routes between Newark, Los Angeles, and San Francisco and the longer-range A321XLR that will fly shorter transatlantic and Latin American routes.
Sometime next year, United will add a new economy-class option on Boeing 777 and 787 widebodies: a row of seats with padded footrests that can fold up to turn a set of three into a "Relax Row" couch—at a price yet to be announced.
Flying in an Air Taxi or Supersonic? Not So Fast
Kirby’s talk on Tuesday also yielded insight into two other aircraft farther off in United’s plans.
One, Archer Aviation’s Midnight electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (EVTOL) air taxi was on display next to a screen showing how it could whisk passengers from LAX to John Wayne Airport in Orange County in 17 minutes.
Kirby told Aratani that crowded airspace meant that scenario might not fly: "I'm a little less excited about them flying to airports perhaps than Archer is."
The Archer representatives in the hangar were not expecting that; United has invested heavily in Archer and shown off plans for Midnight EVTOLs connecting Manhattan to its Newark hub. "It's probably going to be hard to do," Kirby said. "I think they're going to be great in all kinds of other situations."
Aratani also asked the CEO about United’s order for 15 Mach 1.7 passenger jets from the startup Boom Supersonic. "It's still not there," Kirby said of Boom, which finally flew its testbed XB-1 plane past Mach 1 last January, but would need absurdly good timing to get Overture ready for transatlantic service before 2030.
Kirby did commend Boom’s December pivot to adapt its in-development Symphony engine to power AI data centers, which could yield early proof of the design. "I think that's a big step forward to Boom being successful," Kirby said.
People Matter
But so many of the good impressions United hopes for hinge not on better seats or bigger screens but on the service passengers get from flight attendants—who haven’t had a raise since 2020 and voted down a new contract negotiated by their union last year.
"It's really close," Kirby told Aratani of a revised deal, saying "there's nothing that matters as much" as a friendly first impression from FAs. "They're the best in the world, they deserve the best contract." The airline and the union announced a tentative agreement on Thursday.
Disclosure: United covered airfare and lodging for those invited to this event.