TAMPA, Fla. — Air France announced plans Sept. 26 to begin rolling out free Starlink broadband services across its entire fleet in the summer, becoming the latest major airline to partner with SpaceX’s low Earth orbit (LEO) constellation.
The airline did not provide a timeline for connecting its more than 200, mostly Airbus long-haul and regional aircraft to Starlink in a brief news release.
Starlink would eventually replace Air France’s current inflight connectivity (IFC) providers, including Anuvu, Intelsat and Panasonic Avionics, which use satellites in geostationary orbit (GEO).
Air France said Starlink would enable “ground-like” ultra-high-speed connectivity, enabling passengers to play video games online, stream TV and access other services requiring a low-latency connection via LEO satellites orbiting much nearer Earth than GEO.
The airline’s existing IFC providers have been turning to multi-orbit services in the face of mounting competition from Starlink, including buying LEO capacity from Eutelsat’s OneWeb constellation.
Challenges with ground stations have delayed the launch of OneWeb’s global services by about a year, with Eutelsat now projecting the rollout for the spring.
Air France said Starlink connectivity may be restricted when flying over certain countries but did not provide details.
Hawaiian Airlines, now owned by Alaska Airlines, recently said it has started providing Starlink Wi-Fi on most of its transpacific fleet, nearly two and a half years after becoming the first major airline to announce a SpaceX tie-up.
These planes were previously unconnected.
However, United Airlines announced plans Sept. 13 to start transitioning next year from the geostationary connectivity offered by Panasonic, Intelsat, Thales and Viasat to Starlink for the more than 1,000 planes in its fleet.