Starlink Is Now Available on All Hawaiian Airlines Airbus Flights (cnet.com) 36
Hot on the heels of United Airlines' Starlink announcement, Hawaiian Airlines said it, too, is offering "fast and free Starlink Wi-Fi" across its entire Airbus fleet. CNET reports: Hawaiian Airlines is now the first major carrier to use Elon Musk's satellite internet service, which taps more than 7,000 satellites in low earth orbit to deliver high-speed internet worldwide. "In Starlink's low earth orbit constellation of advanced satellites, the latest of which utilize a revolutionary laser mesh network, we found an ideal solution to ensure reliable, high-speed, low-latency Wi-Fi on transpacific flights," a Hawaiian Airlines representative told CNET. "Working with Starlink has allowed us to offer a fast and consistent in-flight connectivity experience that meets our high standard for guest service."
The company first debuted Starlink on its planes in February on a flight from Honolulu to Long Beach, California. It first struck a deal with Starlink in 2022 and has now completed installation across its entire Airbus fleet, which includes 24 A330 planes and 18 A321neos. Hawaiian Airlines will also deploy the service on its two Boeing 787-9 planes, but not its Boeing 717 aircraft, which are used on shorter flights between the Hawaiian Islands.
The company first debuted Starlink on its planes in February on a flight from Honolulu to Long Beach, California. It first struck a deal with Starlink in 2022 and has now completed installation across its entire Airbus fleet, which includes 24 A330 planes and 18 A321neos. Hawaiian Airlines will also deploy the service on its two Boeing 787-9 planes, but not its Boeing 717 aircraft, which are used on shorter flights between the Hawaiian Islands.
Hopefully this makes all airlines (Score:1)
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The airlines I use typically have about $8 or $10 fee for the whole flight, which if anything is even more stupid. Just charge everyone $3 and switch it on already.
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The small fee probably helps discourage the worst offenders, who would be making hours long Skype calls and the like.
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They are flight long fees. Why would you think someone is willing to pay a small fee to say use facebook, but draws the line at a skype call?
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I actually got in-flight wifi for free once. It was not all that useful... After shitposting to Slashdot and reading some news, I ran out of stuff to amuse myself fairly quickly. I suppose I could have streamed some video or something, but do the maths... a couple of hundred people and a connection that can only manage a couple of hundred megabits per second... And it's actually worse than that, because with so many users the bottleneck will likely be the upload speed thanks to how TCP/IP works.
I usually ju
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I actually got in-flight wifi for free once. It was not all that useful... After shitposting to Slashdot and reading some news, I ran out of stuff to amuse myself fairly quickly. I suppose I could have streamed some video or something
I always use in-flight Wifi when available (even when it's not free) mostly to work, but often to stream video. It works fine.
a couple of hundred people and a connection that can only manage a couple of hundred megabits per second
Starlink can provide multi-gigabit data service, depending on what the customer buys. The high data rate packages cost a few thousand dollars per month, but that's nothing compared to the rest of the operating costs of an airliner.
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Flights over oceans are probably a good use case for Starlink, since there won't be many users in those areas. Lack of congestion should really help it.
I suppose I could binge watch something on a long flight, but I'd just load up the .mkv files before going, I wouldn't pay for internet access.
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I wouldn't pay for internet access.
That's what expense accounts are for.
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Some passengers might be attempting to sleep on intercontinental flights.
Premium tickets could arrange business class experience around a sound-proof pod.
Re: Hopefully this makes all airlines (Score:1)
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Disagree. I've never once seen a noise complaint in business class. Drunk morons on a cheap flight on the other hand...
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Head to one of the airline clubs - rich, self-important, and discourteous is really, really common in the USA since interacting in close quarters is less common than other countries.
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Both groups consistently forget to use headphones and make loud phone calls.
You've seen people make phone calls in flight? Or are you talking about on the ground?
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I have not seen phone calls in flight (although it appears to be impossible to restrict this traffic, even Viasat's crappy latency is sufficient for calls).
Technological restrictions aren't relevant; the policy of all airlines (AFAIK) prohibits voice calls in flight. If you do it, the flight attendant will tell you to stop. If you refuse, you'll be arrested upon landing.
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47 CFR 22.925 [ecfr.gov] relates to cellular telephones and not voice communications or audible speakers. FCC and FAA are only concerned with interference, not passenger experience.
Presume you remember when seatbacks had expensive telephones attached that were very much usable in flight. It is a very thin line separating airline interest in making money fr
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Some passengers might be attempting to sleep on intercontinental flights.
Premium tickets could arrange business class experience around a sound-proof pod.
You already get that in business class. Try making a noise after the lights go out and watch the staff come down hard on your arse. The only thing they don't intervene in is the unintentional noise, e.g. a child in pain crying, even then they will usually do everything to assist calming the child down.
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They are flight long fees. Why would you think someone is willing to pay a small fee to say use facebook, but draws the line at a skype call?
Whatever line the user may draw, all airlines ban interactive voice conversations on flights, for the obvious reason that it would be highly annoying to other passengers. And, of course, orders from flight attendants carry the force of federal law, so refusing to obey the rules would get you arrested. I've been on many, many flights with good in-flight Wifi and never seen anyone even try to have a voice call.
I've actually participated in calls from airplanes in flight, but listening only (on earbuds), us
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Cat videos I have no issue with, it's having a conversation with someone who isn't sat next to them that is the problem.
Actually the worst would probably be some arsehole with an Apple Vision Pro. Seat power keeps it going all flight, with them gesticulating for hours on end to control the thing.
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The small fee probably helps discourage the worst offenders, who would be making hours long Skype calls and the like.
Also singles the OP out as someone who only flies domestically in the US. I regularly take trans-Atlantic, Europe-Aisa/Australia and the odd trans-Pacific flight, if you want internet on those flights it starts to cost you. I don't mind it mind you, I always take the flight as an opportunity to unplug, watch some movies, read a book or just look out the window. I don't really mind being out of contact for 10 odd hours between airports. Nothing is so urgent or important that it cant wait until the arrivals h
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I've got a couple of 14 hour ones coming up in a few months too. The people sitting next to you can really make the difference between if a flight is hell or just a boring 14 hour slog.
One of the reasons I pay more for certain airlines is the kind of people who fly on them. Now I have a dilemma because China Air is flying the route for about half the price of ANA and JAL, which is a big chunk of change. But last time I flew to China was awful. The guy I was initially sat next to stank of BO. His entertainme
I buy internet access on all flights (Score:2)
I think most of the Internet access on planes in the US use ground based towers. And it is a total crapshoot. Some places you get really good access. Other places. Nothing. I do a lot of traveling, and if I am stuck on a plane for hours, I might as well use that time to get stuff done. But, the current state of affairs makes it quite challenging. Hopefully Starlink gets adopted by more airlines and change things for the better.
BTW, I don't mind paying $10-$15 per flight for Internet access. If it w
Re: I buy internet access on all flights (Score:2)
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A lot of people would be fine with a 1GB cap per flight (or per hour or whatever) just to be able to send some text messages/emails. This could easily be provided for free.
You can't have 200 people streaming from Netflix UHD over starlink while another 50 is trying to play online games with real-time video chat during the whole flight and the last 50 are downloading torrents and steam games without any speed limit and expect everything to work well. At least not yet.
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I think most of the Internet access on planes in the US use ground based towers. And it is a total crapshoot. Some places you get really good access. Other places. Nothing. I do a lot of traveling, and if I am stuck on a plane for hours, I might as well use that time to get stuff done. But, the current state of affairs makes it quite challenging. Hopefully Starlink gets adopted by more airlines and change things for the better.
BTW, I don't mind paying $10-$15 per flight for Internet access. If it were offered for free, people who do not need it are helping pay for it. And the service will get overwhelmed. Perhaps a tiered service might help with that.
I've always had a theory about people who could never stop talking... they find their own thoughts so scary that they don't want to risk being alone with them. I think that extends to people who can never handle being disconnected.
But I digress. The transmitters are installed on the top of aircraft (one of those little bumps on the top of the fuselage), that generally tells you that the signal is going up rather than down.
Also Hawaiian, famously flies to Hawaii so on a lot of their routes there's not
Not just on Hawaiian Airlines flights (Score:3)
Starlink is even being used on Russian drones [theregister.com] to attack Ukraine. Nice of Putin to test the product's air worthiness.
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Disclaimer: Musk bad, Putin bad, Trump bad, Hitler also bad.
Might be a challenge (Score:3)
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Airplane mode stopped being useful the moment airlines could charge us for wifi.
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yes, I agree. I meant it's ironic how airlines prevented us from using cellular/wifi until they could charge for it. At that point it became instantly safe to use and before that a single person not using airplane mode would mean the plane would crash.
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Airliners keep telling us to put devices into airplane mode or we risk crashing the plane! -Now it's OK?
Yeah. I know. I flew on Delta Airlines domestically this month. They told us to put our devices in airplane mode for take off and landing, but at all other times we were not only free to use them, they strongly encouraged us to use their free wi-fi. The in-flight entertainment system had more choices if you were willing to connect to wi-fi. For example, maybe you got all the episodes of a season of a streaming TV show vs. only 5 if you didn't connect. It seems like Delta and other airlines want
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Well, the evolution of the whole thing is complex and nuanced.
Basically, personal electronics weren't a thing until the 1960s, so it was fine. Then you had the portable transistor radio, where it was discovered their internal oscillators interfered with the radio on the plane. The FAA didn't issue an outright ban, but left the decision up to individual airlines on what to do. This still remains the law.
Th
In the category of sat ISPs, Musk crushed it (Score:2)