Airlines began offering Wi-Fi on planes in early 2003. Lufthansa was the first, after they established an alliance with Connexion by Boeing.
Since then, more and more airlines have offered the service – some for a charge, some for free. Some, like Delta Air Lines, initially offered Wi-Fi for a fee and later made it available for free, albeit only to members of their loyalty program.
United is another airline that initially offered their passengers standard Wi-Fi for a fee. The airline has touted four Wi-Fi providers, Gogo, Panasonic, Thales and Viasat, each providing different coverage and prices, depending on aircraft, location and length of flight. (As a bonus, T-Mobile customers have been able to get free unlimited Wi-Fi, texting and streaming for eligible T-Mobile customers on most domestic and international United flights).
More recently, United announced they would offer free satellite on select flights via Starlink. Like Delta, the offer would be made available to their MileagePlus members.
The first few planes to get/offer the Starlink Wi-Fi were roughly 24 Embraer E175 regional jets. However, not long after United began offering this free service, it quietly shut the service down.
What happened?
Turned out there was some sort of radio interference between the Starlink antennas installed on the E175 Embraers and the pilot’s communication systems. Yep, pilots were reporting interference with the VHF frequency: they said there was static when they were talking with air traffic controllers, and that was affecting their ability to understand everything that was being said.
The source of the static was discovered to be the new Starlink system interfering with the VHF radios. So as a precaution, United shut off the brand-new Starlink Wi-Fi on those planes.
Whomp whomp.
United and Starlink developed a patch to overcome the issue, and a handful of the affected planes were updated. Unfortunately, United decided not to update the remaining aircraft that were having the problem. Why? So that their flight schedules wouldn’t be disrupted. Of course. Therefore, the planes that didn’t receive the patch will now have to wait until their next planned maintenance.
So for now, if you’re on one of those Embraer E175s, chances are you COULD have had free internet…but now you can’t, until United pulls the plane for its scheduled maintenance.
Needless to say, this sort of issue happens. United said in a statement to TPG, “Starlink is now installed on about two dozen United regional aircraft. United and Starlink teams are working together to address a small number of reports of static interference during the operation of the Wi-Fi system, which is fairly common with any new airline Wi-Fi provider. We expect the service to be back up and running on these aircraft soon.”
Feature Image: Colin Brown // flickr // License CC BY 2.0
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