Starlink Aviation Tracker 2026: Every Airline, Every Aircraft, Every Route

TL;DR — last full verification pass 2 August 2026

• 40+ commercial airlines have committed to Starlink, with a backlog in the thousands of aircraft.
• airBaltic is the only airline at 100% fleet coverage. Qatar Airways (777 + A350 fleets complete), United (regional fleet done, mainline installs running daily), and Hawaiian (full Airbus fleet) lead among larger carriers.
• Free for passengers is the common model but no longer a rule. Copa launched in July 2026 as the first airline anywhere to charge for Starlink, and IAG's low-cost brands Vueling and LEVEL are paywalling it too.
• Notable holdouts: Delta picked Amazon Leo instead. Ryanair has no Wi-Fi plans. American, once a holdout, signed with Starlink in May 2026 — but its installs do not start until 2027.
• A signed deal is not a connected seat. Most of the headline commitments below have few or no aircraft actually flying with Starlink. Check the "Equipped today" column, not the "Aircraft committed" one.
• Real-world median speed: ~152 Mbps download / 24 Mbps upload / 44 ms latency (Ookla) — but per-passenger speed depends on aircraft load and antenna count.

👉 Check whether YOUR specific flight has Starlink Wi-Fi — type any flight number, get an instant probability with reasoning. Free, no signup.

How to read this page. Rollout status changes constantly, and this article is a snapshot, not a feed. Every claim below is tied to the date it was verified, and the "Updated" date at the top tells you how old the most recent pass is. If that date is months behind today, assume deployments have moved on — the direction of travel is reliable, the counts are not. For a status that is current at the moment you ask, check your specific flight.

Why Starlink changed in-flight Wi-Fi

For two decades, in-flight Wi-Fi meant either slow air-to-ground service over land or expensive geostationary satellite links with 600+ ms latency. Starlink Aero uses SpaceX's low-earth-orbit constellation at ~550 km altitude, which collapses round-trip latency to 25–50 ms — usable for video calls, online gaming, and cloud apps that GEO satellites simply cannot serve.

The economics also shifted. Starlink's per-aircraft hardware kit is roughly $150,000 plus install (FA Aircraft Sales), and the antenna is a flat 23"×24" electronically-steered phased array — no mechanical gimbal, lighter weight, lower drag. That made fleetwide retrofits financially viable for airlines who had previously kept Wi-Fi as a paid premium.

The result: the biggest in-flight connectivity migration in aviation history. This tracker maps where it stands.

The tracker — every airline with a public Starlink commitment

Sorted by total aircraft committed. Status reflects publicly verified deployments as of the verification date at the top of this page.

Business aviation (separate from commercial above): NetJets has signed for 600 aircraft (source) and Flexjet is in active rollout. Most major BizAv operators now offer Starlink as an option.

Notable holdouts

Delta Air Lines — picked Amazon Kuiper

Delta announced on 31 March 2026 that it will install Amazon Leo connectivity — the constellation formerly branded Project Kuiper — on 500 aircraft starting in 2028, bypassing Starlink entirely (CNBC). In the interim Delta continues with Viasat and Hughes hardware. For travelers booking Delta in 2026–2027, expect GEO-satellite-class performance (slow, high-latency).

American Airlines — no longer a holdout

American signed with Starlink on 26 May 2026, committing more than 500 Airbus narrowbodies including incoming A321neo and A321XLR deliveries (CNBC). That ended a long public deliberation between SpaceX and Amazon.

The catch is timing: installations do not begin until Q1 2027. In the meantime American continues to run the free-for-AAdvantage service it launched in January 2026 on Viasat and Intelsat hardware, sponsored by AT&T (American). So American has broad free coverage today and better technology later, but not both at once.

Ryanair — no plans

Europe's largest low-cost carrier still has no in-flight Wi-Fi product. CEO Michael O'Leary's position remains that the economics do not work for short-haul European operations.

Aircraft compatibility — what is STC-approved

The Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) is FAA / EASA paperwork that says "this aircraft model is approved to fly with this antenna installed." Without an STC for your specific aircraft type, no Starlink — even if your airline has signed a deal.

FAA-approved (in commercial service):

• Boeing 737-800 (United STC, Sep 2025)
• Boeing 777-200LR / 777-300ER
• Boeing 787-8 / 787-9
• Embraer ERJ-135 / ERJ-145 / Legacy 600
• Embraer E170 / E175
• Airbus A220-300
• Airbus A320 family (SAS became the first European operator to fly Starlink on an A320, March 2026)
• Airbus A321neo
• Airbus A330-200 / A330-300
• Airbus A350-900 / A350-1000
• Airbus A380 — Emirates has flown A380s with Starlink commercially since April 2026, using three antennae per aircraft (industry-first)

EASA-approved:

• ATR 72-600 (Jan 2025 — first turboprop) (source)
• Cessna Citation 560XL family (Apr 2026) (source)

STC in progress (not yet flying with Starlink commercially):

• Boeing 737 MAX 8/9 — STCs in process at Alaska, WestJet, flydubai
• Boeing 737-700 / 737-900ER — In progress

Notably absent from any STC roadmap:

• Boeing 717 (Hawaiian retains for inter-island; no Starlink ever)
• Older 757/767 widebodies

How Starlink Aero compares to incumbents

The latency gap is what travelers notice first. A Zoom call simply does not work over a 600 ms GEO link. It does over Starlink — so much so that several airlines (Qatar, Emirates) explicitly market video-call support as a headline feature.

Performance reality — what speed do passengers actually see?

Marketing claims and real-world experience diverge. Here is what independent testing has measured:

• Ookla median across multiple airlines: 152 Mbps down / 24 Mbps up / 44 ms latency (source)
• Per-aircraft peak (vendor claims): Qatar Airways and Alaska Airlines each cite "up to 500 Mbps per aircraft"
• Single-user median (academic study, transcontinental): ~64 Mbps download per device (arxiv.org, Aug 2025)
• JSX MacBook test (The Points Guy): consistent 200 Mbps across flight phases

What affects your actual speed:

1. Passenger load — bandwidth is shared across the cabin. A full 777 yields lower per-seat speed than a half-empty one.
2. Antenna count — Emirates A380 has 3 antennas; most aircraft have 1. More antennas = more concurrent capacity.
3. Latitude — Starlink's constellation is denser at mid-to-high latitudes than over the equator.
4. Time of day in the satellite's footprint — capacity from each LEO bird is shared with ground users below.

Practical takeaway: Plan for 30–80 Mbps per device on a typical full flight, with bursts above 100 Mbps. This is plenty for HD streaming, video calls, and file uploads. It is not symmetric to a fixed-line gigabit.

What to expect through end of 2026 and into 2027

These are airline targets, not achievements — and the record so far is that they slip. British Airways planned a steady 2026 rollout and stopped at five aircraft. Emirates announced an install rate it has not come close to sustaining. Read the list below as intent.

Targeted by end of 2026:

• United: ~1,000 aircraft (mainline + regional)
• Southwest: 300+ aircraft
• Air France: full fleet
• Qatar Airways: 120+ widebodies (already achieved)
• Hawaiian: full Airbus (already achieved) + first 787-9s
• Copa: majority of 121 aircraft
• Iberia: around a third of the long-haul fleet
• Vueling: first aircraft in service
• WestJet: full widebody fleet

Targeted through 2027:

• American: installs begin Q1 2027 across 500+ Airbus narrowbodies
• Alaska Airlines: full mainline
• Virgin Atlantic: full fleet
• Korean Air group: full fleetwide
• Emirates: full 232-aircraft fleet
• Wizz Air: installs begin

2028 and beyond:

• Lufthansa Group: full coverage by 2029 (largest single deployment in Europe)
• Delta: 500 aircraft on Amazon Leo, not Starlink
• JetBlue: transition to Amazon Leo, starting 2027

Across all publicly announced commitments the commercial airline backlog runs into the thousands of aircraft. SpaceX has separately disclosed that the bottleneck is antenna manufacturing and installation capacity, not airline demand — which is precisely why "committed" and "equipped" have drifted so far apart.

How we built this tracker

WillItWiFi maintains every entry in this article from primary sources only. Here is our methodology:

1. Source preference: airline press releases > SpaceX/Starlink press releases > regulatory filings (FCC, FAA, EASA) > established aviation trade press (Runway Girl Network, ch-aviation, Flightglobal). We avoid affiliate-driven travel blog rewrites.
2. Status verification: "Equipped" counts come either from airline announcements or third-party fleet trackers. When sources conflict, we cite the most recent.
3. Free-vs-paid classification: taken from the airline's own published policy, not press release marketing language. Loyalty signup requirements are noted explicitly.
4. Dating, not promises: we do not commit to a review schedule we cannot guarantee. Instead, the "Updated" date at the top is the date of the last full verification pass, and it is the honest measure of this page's age. We prefer durable phrasing ("majority of the fleet, rollout ongoing") over precise counts that quietly rot, and we flag where an airline's stated target has diverged from its actual pace. If you need a status that is correct right now, check your flight rather than trusting a static article.
5. Conflicts of interest: WillItWiFi has no commercial relationship with SpaceX, any listed airline, or any competing connectivity provider.

If you spot an error or have an update, the contact link is at the bottom of every page.

FAQ

Which airline has the most Starlink-equipped aircraft today?

By raw count, United — its regional fleet is complete and mainline installs run daily. By proportion, airBaltic is the only airline at 100%: all 55 of its A220-300s were done by May 2026, so it is the one airline where Starlink is guaranteed rather than likely. Qatar Airways leads among widebody operators, with its full 777 and A350 fleets complete.

Is Starlink Wi-Fi free on every airline that has it?

No — and this changed in 2026. Free for all passengers remains the most common model (Hawaiian, Qatar, Emirates, airBaltic, British Airways), often with a free loyalty signup (United, Air France, Virgin Atlantic, SAS, Southwest, Lufthansa Group). But Copa became the first airline in the world to charge for Starlink when it launched in July 2026, reserving free access for business class, higher-tier ConnectMiles members and existing Starlink subscribers. IAG's low-cost brands Vueling and LEVEL are also paywalling it. "Starlink" and "free" are no longer synonyms.

Can I get Starlink on a Delta flight?

Not in 2026 or 2027. Delta announced in March 2026 that it will install Amazon Leo connectivity instead, beginning in 2028. Delta's current Wi-Fi runs on Viasat and Hughes (GEO satellites).

Does Starlink work on small regional jets?

Yes — Embraer E175s (United, Alaska/SkyWest/Horizon, Air France) are Starlink-equipped at scale, and older Embraer ERJ-135/145s have full STC coverage and are flown commercially with Starlink by JSX. Air Canada even runs Starlink on some Dash 8-400 turboprops. The ATR 72-600 was certified by EASA in January 2025, but in practice almost none carry it: Air New Zealand's is a trial on a single aircraft, not a rollout.

Does it really work for video calls?

Yes, when the aircraft is not at full capacity. Median latency of ~44 ms is within Zoom's recommended range (under 150 ms one-way). Several airlines explicitly market video-call support — Qatar Airways was the first to do so on its Starlink-equipped 777 fleet.

What about Boeing 717s on Hawaiian's inter-island routes?

No Starlink. Hawaiian has no plans to equip the 717 fleet. Inter-island flights remain unconnected.

How do I know if my specific flight has Starlink?

Search your flight number on WillItWiFi — we cross-reference your aircraft type and operator with the most recent rollout status to give you a probability and confidence score.