Hawaiian Airlines is currently installing SpaceX’s Starlink Aviation inflight connectivity system on its Airbus A321neos, after the kit received supplemental type certification from the US Federal Aviation Administration for installation on the aircraft type.
“Received FAA approval of the Starlink system on the Airbus A321neo, which is currently being installed on that fleet,” Hawaiian revealed this week in its 4Q and full year 2023 earnings report.
Starlink Aviation is powered by SpaceX’s Ku-band Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellation. Thus far, the Starlink hardware package for aircraft, including a phased array antenna, has also been STC’d on Embraer ERJ-135 and -145 jets, as flown by Starlink customer JSX, as well as Gulfstream G650 and G650ER business jets.
STC work for Boeing 737 variants appears to be in the pipeline. According to AIN Media Group editor-in-chief Matt Thurber on LinkedIn, it “looks like SpaceX has added a Boeing 737-800 to its corporate fleet, and apparently the 737 is test flying a Starlink satcom installation”.
Hawaiian, meanwhile, is touting that it will be “the first major airline” to bring the Starlink technology on board. It expects the service to be “the fastest, most capable inflight connectivity available worldwide, offered free to every guest”.
In April 2022, the carrier announced that its fleet of A321neos, A330s and new Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners would be fitted with Starlink IFC hardware. Installations on select aircraft were originally expected to begin in 2023. But Hawaiian advised the market last summer that the service was slightly delayed to early 2024, and would debut on the A321neo. With the A321neo kit STC’d, Hawaiian’s revised timeline for an early 2024 launch aboard its Airbus narrowbodies appears to be on track.
“Frictionless Wi-Fi” is how SpaceX describes its low-latency LEO inflight connectivity solution. “This idea of frictionless is just like when walking around with your cellphone in your living room, just with wings. You walk on the plane and the Internet works,” Starlink director of sales Nicholas Galano said last year at the APEX TECH conference in Los Angeles.
Noting that SpaceX is already building out its Gen 2 network, he added: “One thing that is common that we notice for all passengers and people that use the Internet in general, they just want more. So that will continue to happen. So for us it’s a race to continue to stay in front of that demand and launch as much capacity as we can.”
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