Starlink WiFi in the Air is a Game Changer

United Airlines is installing Starlink WiFi on its fleet. Today, my flight from Indianapolis to Houston has Starlink. It is an absolute game changer. I had download speeds in excess of 250 Mbps, and upload speeds of nearly 30 Mbps.

When I have a flight, I deliberately schedule activities that do not require accessing the internet, as connectivity may be slow or non-existent. But now with Starlink, I can do anything in the air that I could do on the ground. Indeed, it should be possible to listen to Zoom calls, aided by closed captioning.

Comments

[Flight-ER-Doc]

Installing Starlink on my next airplane will also be significantly less expensive than installing the provider I had on my last airplane: Monthly costs will also be significantly less, and performance considerably improved.

[Enrique]

Josh needs to chill the fuck out

[Gasman]

Just how long is one on a flight, with laptop open, and seat mate not jostling things, that one is productively doing things that only internet connectivity allows. Three hours tops maybe?
Still preparing for the meeting/conference to come; better not cut things that close under most circumstances.
Longer international flight eastbound, sleep is essential to wake with a circadian rhythm matching the destination. Westbound international, it's going to be a 30+ hour day and how productive can one be when one's circadian rhythm is late into one's biologic day.
I hear books are thing. Don't have to turn them off during takeoff or landing either.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Maybe people are different.

[Roger S]

Regulations might prohibit zoom calls.

[Dr. Ed 2]

This is far better service than students at a Research 1 University have -- today...

[Incunabulum]

The one place left where you could tune out and its gone now. Work everywhere, all the time.

[Daddyhill]

Who's paying for that service? Elon Musk, out of his own pocket? It has to be the airline, I think, which of course is adding the cost of it to their ticket prices. And just asking, is the ticket price itemized so that you can opt out of that service?

And I gotta ask also, how do we know that Starlink isn't microwaving our brains somehow, and slowly turning us into raving lunatics? I mean, hey, there are still lots of people who are still think cell phones cause brain cancer, and that 5G is turning us all into Chinese.