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An info-dense report published Tuesday shows that in-flight satellite broadband is faster than ever, thanks mainly to Starlink, but the aging onboard Wi-Fi networks relaying that connectivity to passengers' devices may now serve as spoilers.
The latest in a series of studies from Ookla draws from runs of its Speedtest connection-benchmarking tool on flights during the second half of 2025 to hand first place to SpaceX's low-Earth-orbit satellite broadband. Ookla's primary metric in this report, unlike one released last June, was not speed but consistency, measured by reliably supporting downloads of at least 25Mbps and uploads of at least 3Mbps.
The lead airline on Ookla's chart of 51 carriers is a regional European carrier that five years ago was counting on cryptocurrency and blockchain experiments as technological advantages: Latvia-based airBaltic, which began installing Starlink on its Airbus A220 fleet in early 2025.
Ookla found that 98.3% of Speedtest samples on airBaltic flights met its consistency standard. Three other early Starlink adopters were right on its tail: Canada's WestJet, with 95.8%; Hawaiian Airlines, at 95.3%; and Air France, at 93.7%. "Airlines achieving over 90% speed consistency...are almost exclusively serviced by Starlink," Ookla says.
Ookla's 25/3 benchmark is objectively bad in terms of ground-based broadband—the FCC retired that as its definition of broadband in 2024 in favor of a standard of 100Mbps down and 20Mbps up. But from a chair in the sky, it has historically ranked as decent.
Three other airlines exceeded 80% consistency: Qatar Airways (87.6%), Air Canada (84.6%), and Alaska Airlines (81.6%). Qatar and Alaska are also quickly deploying Starlink, but Air Canada has installed a system from Intelsat that connects to satellites in both low and geostationary Earth orbit on its regional jets.
One industry analyst cited Air Canada's example to observe that Starlink does not have the market to itself. "Starlink is a strong performer for passengers, but the consistency data suggests other providers are also able to deliver, assuming the airline contracts for that capacity," Seth Miller wrote in a Bluesky direct message.
Measuring the Performance Gaps
Ookla's new report, unlike last June's, does not list fleetwide speed scores. Instead, it offers a breakdown of median download speeds among satellite systems at nine airlines that showed large performance gaps between Starlink, which has more than 10,000 satellites in orbits as low as 300 miles up, and older services based on satellites roughly 22,0000 miles away in geosynchronous orbit.
At United Airlines, for example, the Starlink service that's currently on most regional jets but only a small fraction of mainline aircraft delivered downloads that Speedtest clocked at 319.99Mbps. "GEO" broadband from Intelsat and ViaSat on other jets was vastly slower, at 56.48Mbps and 15.34Mbps.
Many United passengers on flights without Starlink now face a second disadvantage not mentioned in Ookla's report: T-Mobile yanking a free Wi-Fi benefit means subscribers no longer get at least an hour of connectivity, while Starlink is free to use on that and other airlines.
Three other airlines had Starlink downloads above 300Mbps: Emirates (308.65Mbps), airBaltic (305.77 Mbps), and Alaska (304.02 Mbps).
Ookla also published median download and upload speeds for Starlink across all airlines tracked in Q4 of 2025: 223.14Mbps and 32.31Mbps, both improvements over the Q4 2024 median speeds of 159.44Mbps down and 22.7Mbps up.
But even on a bad flight, Starlink is speedier than alternatives. As Ookla analyst Kerry Baker wrote in the report: "Starlink's slowest users still experienced faster internet than the average user on any other satellite network."
Some of these finer-grained numbers could reflect small sample sizes, as Miller cautioned after reading the report. Ookla spokeswoman Raquel Sanz said in an email Tuesday that the report drew on "hundreds of thousands" of Speedtest results but didn't have further details.
Baker, meanwhile, noted in the report that Starlink samples made up "nearly 48% of the commercial Speedtest sample share." That could have something to do with people's interest in benchmarking something new and fast versus confirming that the old, slow thing remains old and slow.
Starlink has attracted a flock of additional airline signups in recent months, including Southwest Airlines, Lufthansa Group, and International Airlines Group, the parent firm of British Airways, Iberia, and Aer Lingus, among others. But SpaceX's nascent rival Amazon Leo has begun picking up its own airline customers, led by JetBlue Airways and Delta Air Lines.
Wi-Fi 7 Is Still Grounded
Ookla's report also looked at the types of Wi-Fi networks observed on planes, finding much less progress. While Wi-Fi 7 is now in the mainstream of home wireless routers and Wi-Fi 8 models are coming—at least, they were before the FCC banned the import and sale of foreign-made routers on vaguely explained security grounds—Ookla did not spot any Wi-Fi 7 networks in flight.
Only 11.1% of Speedtest results showed Wi-Fi 6, while 81% had Wi-Fi 5 and 7.9% featured the 2008-vintage Wi-Fi 4. The figures weren't much better on Starlink-equipped flights, with Wi-Fi 6 observed in only 18.7% of those samples.
This, Baker wrote, yielded significant speed differences: "Moving from Wi-Fi 5 to Wi-Fi 6 increased Starlink's median speed by approximately 24% (from 140.35Mbps to 173.86Mbps)."
One takeaway is that airlines shouldn't stop at replacing the antennas atop their planes; they should also swap out the routers inside. Another may be more relatable: You're not alone in struggling to upgrade your Wi-Fi.
Disclosure: PCMag's parent company, Ziff Davis, owns Ookla.