Delta made a big bet on Amazon Leo and that’s turning out to be a very bad business decision. Leo is way behind and nowhere close to having something competitive with Starlink.
If you’ve ever had Starlink in flight, it is truly amazing. Actual high speed stable internet in flight.
I've seen Starlink being unreliable (freezing during teleconferences) and I've seen it performing amazingly. The latter experience was during Starship tests, when the vehicle re-entered Earth's atmosphere and the plasma heated the tiles. Normally, re-entering vehicles suffer Loss Of Signal because their radios are unable to reach ground stations. But Starship using Starlink had zero L.O.S. and had some amazing camera views that were being relayed by the Starlink contellations. Soon this will also be available during crewed spaceflight.
Elon musk is quoted as saying the Delta CEO will lose his job over not committing to Starlink [1]. This comes across as petulant rather than professional.
The bigger issue is that a boycott of a major legacy airlines like Delta is virtually impossible to sustain due to the structural monopolies in place. The prices are out of control and I'm more concerned about that, than WiFi.
I despise wifi in planes on long hauls. With the improvement of the reliability, there are now people yelling their super important corporate call across the whole cabin.
On a recent flight I had to tell a guy in a seat nearby to stop yelling. He was obnoxious so I asked his neighbor to switch seats for a moment so that I can participate in that call as well. He stopped.
If you’ve ever had Starlink in flight, it is truly amazing. Actual high speed stable internet in flight.
The bigger issue is that a boycott of a major legacy airlines like Delta is virtually impossible to sustain due to the structural monopolies in place. The prices are out of control and I'm more concerned about that, than WiFi.
[1]: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2105091996255703121?s=20
On a recent flight I had to tell a guy in a seat nearby to stop yelling. He was obnoxious so I asked his neighbor to switch seats for a moment so that I can participate in that call as well. He stopped.
I always wish wifi was down.