Had to run out to Dayton this week for work and my COS-ORD flight had the new Starlink connection. Surprisingly enough this was on an E-175 while my flight on an airbus back to DIA didn't have it. Anyhow it worked flawlessly. I streamed music dicked around on the internet and streamed a couple episodes of king of the hill. Really can't wait til it's more readily available.

I was on the London to Houston flight yesterday and there was no WiFi. Most other international carriers provide WIFI for free and it actually works. United charges for it and at least half the time it's not functional. Sitting on 10-16 hr flights, I need WiFi to get work done and it's enough for me to choose other airlines. Hopefully United rolls out Starlink very quickly or they will lose me as a customer.

I fly JSX whenever I can and the Starlink quickly spoils you. Probably 30+ flights now and not a single outage or issue.

It's bad on AA's international fleet too. The widebody jets with the Panasonic systems yield basically unusable connections on long haul international flights. The domestic jets are pretty good now, although they don't use Starlink yet.

I see all airlines eventually needing to move to Starlink to stay competitive. When ViaSat dorked up the deployment of the first Viasat-3 satellite it pretty much slammed the door shut on the viability of geostationary coverage that can even begin to hold a candle to Starlink.

Anyone been able to use the TMobile Starlink on a flight?

I was a beta tester and tried to use it over the Atlantic on an AirFrance flight that gypped us out of wifi. I could not get it to work.

I would think you would need some line of sight to the satellite, so 'maybe' if you had a window, but more likely you need a bigger antenna, which the crew may not like.

I have seen people do similar for GPS on flights.

Funny you said that...I was actually holding my phone up to the window trying to get it to connect.

Googled and these guys say now way as Starlink is 11GHz and thus "two big" to get enough signal through airplane windows.

I have not confirmed what they said, but conceptually makes sense to me.

The T-Mobile Starlink setup actually uses a limited number of Starlink satellites that have transponders operating in one of the cellular frequency bands (not 11 GHz). It only supports texting as of right now though.

Yeah, I knew it was only for texting. That's all I wanted to do when I tried it. I had forgotten to give my cat sitter the new door code and remembered mid-flight.

They've cancelled the beta test, and I don't have the plan that has this as a "perk". But I was mainly just curious if it could work.

I'm on United twice a week out of DIA and haven't had starlink yet. It's free, correct?

Yes, Starlink is free on UA and it works great.
United regional planes are first to get Starlink. Something like 60 aircraft have installed service.

Yup that's right, all features are free. Pretty great service.

Jock 07 said:

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dicked around on the internet

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Pretty sure that's frowned upon!

Seriously, I have Starlink for my truck and it is awesome. I've taken it to as remote as one can get Alaska and it was awesome there too.

Jock 07 said:

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Yup that's right, all features are free. Pretty great service.

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looking forward to seeing it pop up, but don't think I'll search out United Express flights for it just yet.

I flew IAH - Charleston a few weeks ago. The flight there had Starlink and it was awesome. Free, easy to connect to, flawless streaming with no lag. Sadly, the flight back did not.

Flew from traverse city to Iah a few weeks ago