Airplane Wi-Fi Is Now … Good?

Expensive and erratic, in-flight Wi-Fi has been much of a punchline than a pipeline complete nan past decade. But 2025 has marked a oversea alteration for nan skies: nan rollout of fast, and free, connectivity connected astir of nan world’s awesome airlines.

Satellite exertion has enabled leaps successful velocity and bandwidth. SpaceX’s Starlink web of debased Earth orbit satellites, for example, tin present a relationship tin of downloading much than 200 megabits per second—twice arsenic accelerated arsenic astir basal location net plans. As a result, a big of world airlines are inking deals pinch nan company.

“We’re creating a small spot of a surviving room successful nan sky,” says Grant Milstead, vice president of integer exertion for United Airlines, which flew its first Starlink-equipped route, from Chicago to Detroit, successful May.

The boost successful bandwidth is changing nan look of business travel, giving flyers nan unprecedented expertise to Slack, Zoom, and collaborate pinch coworkers from 35,000 feet. They tin download lengthy PowerPoints, edit Google Docs successful existent time, and subordinate livestream conferences arsenic seamlessly arsenic connected nan ground. (Voice and video calls are technically imaginable pinch outer exertion but prohibited by nan FAA and “strongly discouraged” by airlines astir nan world from an etiquette standpoint.)

It’s a displacement that’s felt, astatine times, for illustration it would ne'er come. For astir of nan 21st century, airlines relied connected ground-based compartment towers that provided slow, aliases no, sum complete agrarian areas, deserts, and oceans—a problem for carriers specified arsenic Air New Zealand and Hawaiian Airlines. Launched successful 2008, Aircell, which would later go known arsenic Gogo Inflight, offered a pricey yet spotty air-to-ground work that served arsenic nan stodgy manufacture standard.

Then, successful 2013, JetBlue collaborated pinch Viasat to pioneer nan usage of satellites for in-flight Wi-Fi. Though faster and much reliable than Gogo, satellite-based connectivity was slow to return off—an costly endeavor requiring affixing an antenna to nan apical of nan level and placing routers passim nan aircraft.

Major carriers specified arsenic Delta and Cathay Pacific signed connected pinch nan supplier respective years later, but nan advent of Starlink has curtailed Viasat’s first-mover advantage. Qatar Airways, Scandinavian Airlines (SAS), Hawaiian Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, and Air France person adopted aliases are successful talks to perchance aviator trial Starlink technology, arsenic person Canada’s WestJet and US-based charter usability JSX.

This communicative is portion of The New Era of Work Travel, a collaboration betwixt nan editors of WIRED and Condé Nast Traveler to thief you navigate nan perks and pitfalls of nan modern business trip.

Air New Zealand, which uses Viasat for its transpacific flights, plans to equip its home fleet pinch Starlink work later this year. The move will beryllium a “game-changer” for business travelers who mightiness typically thrust betwixt hubs specified arsenic Auckland and Wellington, according to Nikhil Ravishankar, nan airline’s main integer officer.