Hawaiian Airlines has announced the launch of free Starlink Wi-Fi on most of its transpacific fleet flying to and from Hawaii. The airline has finished installing antennas for SpaceX’s low Earth orbit (LEO) network across its 42 Airbus aircraft, including 24 A330s and 18 A321Neos.
Hawaiian Airlines spokesperson Marissa Villegas said the company plans to connect its two Boeing 787-9 planes to Starlink, and 10 more 787-9s on order to arrive by 2027, over the coming years. The airline does not plan to bring inflight connectivity to its 19 Boeing 717 planes, which are used for short-range flights within the Hawaiian Islands.
Hawaiian Airlines was the first major airline to announce a deal with Starlink in April 2022. The company touts the service as indistinguishable from low-latency internet access at home. Since then, Starlink has won deals with small airlines and business jet providers. In September 2023, the company landed its next major aviation deal with United Airlines, with plans to connect more than 1,000 planes in the airline’s international fleet.
Nick Galano, director of Starlink sales and partnerships and its head of aviation, said the company had around 2,500 aircraft under contract as of September 17, 2023. Starlink’s network currently has around 300 terabits per second of capacity, which continues to increase as SpaceX launches more satellites.
“Now that constraint is gone,” he said.
Galano called for more standardization to streamline and accelerate the certification process, which is holding back Starlink deployments. He said Starlink equipment can now be installed on an aircraft in less than a day.
Hawaiian Airlines recently completed its $1.9 billion sale to Alaska Airlines. Alaska Airlines is upgrading its planes with enhanced connectivity services from Starlink aviation competitor Intelsat. Intelsat provides inflight connectivity from its fleet of geostationary satellites and capacity leased from Eutelsat’s OneWeb LEO network.