American Airlines is going all in on Starlink. The carrier plans to outfit its entire mainline fleet with the SpaceX satellite internet service, extending a program that covered only its Airbus narrowbodies when it was announced in May.
Installations are set to begin in early 2027 and will now include Boeing narrowbodies and widebodies. More than 1,000 aircraft are slated for the upgrade, which American says would give it one of the largest Starlink-connected fleets in the world. The planes will carry Starlink’s Performance Aero Terminal, hardware capable of speeds up to 1 Gbps per terminal.
“Our customers have told us that dependable connectivity can make a meaningful difference in how they spend their time in the air,” said Heather Garboden, American’s chief customer officer.
For advisors, the practical upshot is consistency. Clients flying American today can land on any of several Wi-Fi systems depending on the aircraft, and a fleetwide standard means the same gate-to-gate connection whether they are on a short domestic hop or a long-haul international flight.
The expansion comes as Starlink turns into a baseline expectation among U.S. airlines. United Airlines expects to have the service on more than 1,000 planes by the end of this year and to finish installations before the end of 2027, and offers it free to MileagePlus members. Southwest, Alaska, and Hawaiian have also signed on. Delta Air Lines went a different direction, and plans to introduce Amazon Leo beginning in 2028, by which point United expects its own rollout to be complete. That gap has some industry observers casting Starlink as a rare opening for American and United to chip away at Delta’s premium positioning. United is already pressing the point with a status match offer aimed at Delta and American elites and built around faster Wi-Fi.
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