Will LEO Constellations Finally Deliver Reliable In-Flight Wi-Fi?

Ever since its introduction 2 decades ago, in-flight Wi-Fi has been plagued by severely restricted bandwidths and intermittent outages, drawbacks that led to poor user experiences and a general lack of trust in the technology. These restrictions were due to the technical limitations of the backhaul connections, which relied on either terrestrial cell towers or Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) satellite constellations. Yet the emergence of in-flight Wi-Fi underpinned by Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellations has the potential to revolutionize in-flight Wi-Fi, enabling significantly faster speeds, lower latencies, and uninterrupted connectivity. Highlighting the performance improvements of this new backhaul method, after Hawaiian Airlines became the first major U.S. airline to introduce a free Wi-Fi service backed by LEO satellites in 2024, Ookla reported that the airline’s in-flight Wi-Fi had the best speed and latency metrics of any airline tested in 2025.

Having proven the technology’s potential, 2025 saw adoption of in-flight Wi-Fi solutions leveraging LEO constellations skyrocket, with most installations utilizing Starlink infrastructure. In February 2025, Latvian airline airBaltic installed Starlink terminals to become the first European airline to launch free Wi-Fi on a commercial service. This was followed by United Airlines’ installation of its first Starlink terminal in March, and the airline subsequently began retrofitting roughly 40 planes a month in order to upgrade its entire fleet by the end of this year. Air France also commenced installations in 2025, whereas Scandinavian Airlines Systems (SAS) and Canadian airline WestJet both plan to complete retrofits across their entire fleets and bring their Wi-Fi services online by the end of 2025. In July 2025, Virgin Atlantic also announced its partnership with Starlink, with the goal of equipping its entire fleet by 2027. This ABI Insight explores the main factors driving the accelerating adoption of in-flight Wi-Fi solutions powered by LEO satellites, analyzes the solutions from the market’s major suppliers, and answers what this means for airlines and the broader industry.

Today, the most widespread technology leveraged by airlines for in-flight Wi-Fi connectivity is Air-To-Ground (ATG) solutions. These rely on antennas installed on the body of an aircraft transmitting with terrestrial cell towers, with on-board Wi-Fi Access Points (APs) then connecting with the passengers. Because existing ATG solutions are based on 3G/4G technology, speeds are restricted to no more than 10 Megabits per Second (Mbps), which is then shared among the passengers of the aircraft. To overcome this limitation, leading ATG supplier Gogo has developed a 5G-based solution that promises peak throughputs of 80 Mbps, and it is on track to bring this solution to market by the end of 2025. Yet even with these advancements, ATG solutions still suffer from lost connectivity in areas where terrestrial cell towers are absent, such as oceans or sparsely inhabited locations like deserts. This, alongside the demand for increased bandwidths, has driven the emergence of new satellite-based solutions.

Satellite connectivity on planes is not new. Constellations of GEO satellites, which orbit at altitudes of 35,786 Kilometers (km), have been leveraged for in-flight Wi-Fi for over a decade. One example is the GX Aviation solution from Inmarsat (a company that was acquired by Viasat in 2023), which provides in-flight connectivity for airlines including Emirates and Lufthansa via its Global Xpress constellation of Ka-band (26–40 Gigahertz (GHz)) GEO satellites. Yet Global Xpress can only support downlink speeds up to 50 Mbps, and upload speeds of a mere 5 Mbps. This is where LEO constellations come into the picture. Thanks to their much lower orbital altitudes of under 2,000 km, LEO constellations operating in the KU-band (12–18 GHz) can offer wider coverage, speeds of up to 250 Mbps, and latencies less than 99 millisecond (ms).

As detailed in the opening section, Starlink is currently the market leading supplier of LEO constellation satellite connectivity for in-flight Wi-Fi, but others are also eyeing a slice of the market. Intelsat (acquired by SES in July 2025) has developed new Electronically Steerable Antennas (ESAs) that can operate across both Intelsat’s own network of GEO satellites and Eutelsat’s OneWeb constellation of LEO satellites. This solution claims to reliably achieve 190 Mbps with sub-100 ms latency, and has been installed on over 100 aircraft to date. Leading ATG supplier Gogo also recently entered the LEO constellation for in-flight connectivity market, launching a service in 1Q 2025 based again on Eutelstat’s OneWeb, called Gogo Galileo. The service uses two modified variants of ESAs developed by Hughes Network Systems (a subsidiary of EchoStar), a Half-Duplex (HDX) ESA, and a Full-Duplex (FDX) ESA. The former is designed for small and mid-sized aircraft, with speeds of 60 Mbps download and 11 Mbps upload, while the latter is optimized for larger aircraft, with download speeds up to 195 Mbps, and upload speeds of 32 Mbps. Finally, the Global Xpress constellation is also being augmented with additional targeted LEO capacity, alongside terrestrial 5G resources, to improve its performance and coverage.

Upgrading in-flight connectivity equipment on aircraft is a costly and complex process that requires additional aircraft downtime for infrastructure and maintenance, but the benefits of improving connectivity for travelers are myriad. They include:

• Increasing Customer Satisfaction: The provision of reliable Wi-Fi during flights has the potential to vastly improve traveler experiences, allowing them to consume entertainment, work, or communicate with friends and family while flying. A better flying experience is, in turn, likely to lead to a higher likelihood of repeat business.
• Deepening Customer Loyalty: Wi-Fi can be leveraged as a membership benefit or an earned reward within frequent-flyer programs. United Airlines, for example, offers free Wi-Fi for all MileagePlus members.
• Additional Revenue Generation: Airlines can sell access to Wi-Fi services directly, potentially offering different pricing tiers based on performance or download demands. Wi-Fi can also be used to facilitate sales of duty-free items or other merchandise by enabling travelers to shop online during the flight.
• Differentiation from Competitors: Reliable Wi-Fi can greatly enhance an airline’s value proposition, especially for business travelers or other customers with the need to stay connected.
• Traveler Analytics and Enhanced Engagement: By encouraging travelers to connect to in-flight Wi-Fi, the airline will be able to capture valuable traveler information and enable further interaction with the customer. For example, sign-in portals could collect additional traveler details, or access to the Wi-Fi service could be dependent on the installation of the airline’s app. These actions could be used for marketing, customer engagement, or customer understanding purposes.

The faster speeds and lower latencies of in-flight Wi-Fi underpinned by LEO satellites will help further enhance all of these factors, in the process opening up greater scope for tiered service differentiation. At the same time, customer expectations toward in-flight Wi-Fi are currently extremely poor due to the legacy of subpar performance, a view that the industry will need to challenge through traveler education initiatives and promotional campaigns.

With close to 30,000 aircraft in operation worldwide today, the addressable market for in-flight Wi-Fi is sizable. ABI Research recommends that the in-flight Wi-Fi infrastructure ecosystem consider the following when developing their solutions:

• Leverage the Latest Wi-Fi Innovations: Accepting that aviation backhaul inherently faces limitations and the networks are naturally highly congested, it is essential that in-flight Wi-Fi networks can extract the maximum performance possible from the available resources. The improved spectrum efficiency and reliability capabilities of Wi-Fi 8 will be particularly relevant here, and airlines should begin working with the industry to understand how this upcoming Wi-Fi standard can help mitigate their connectivity challenges. Additionally, airlines can also consider introducing the 6 GHz spectrum band into their networks to expand capacity, depending, of course, on their operating jurisdictions.
• Seek Complementary Partnerships: Current or aspiring participants in the in-flight Wi-Fi market should aim to form strategic partnerships or coalitions with complementary companies in the ecosystem. For example, vendors of Wi-Fi APs that wish to supply the aviation industry should partner with the manufacturers of external aviation antennas for satellite or terrestrial connectivity (such as Panasonic Avionics or Hughes Network Systems). These partnerships allow suppliers to fill gaps in their own offerings and create stronger overall value propositions. Partnerships also provide an avenue for new entrants to break into the market, which is likely to further stimulate performance-improving innovation within in-flight Wi-Fi.
• Promote In-Flight Wi-Fi Through Industry Consortia: Industry consortia can play a key role in stimulating the technical advancement and industry adoption of in-flight Wi-Fi solutions. They can do this by establishing collaborative work groups in which multiple parties cooperate to improve the operation of the technology and overcome hurdles to adoption, or through technical trials that highlight the potential of the technology and demonstrate its performance in real-world scenarios.
• Converge Technologies: There are a range of technologies available for in-flight Wi-Fi, and airlines should take advantage of the best combination for their budgetary and capacity needs. While LEO constellations may offer improved speeds and latencies over GEO satellites, they still have capacity restrictions and there are limitations to how may LEO satellites the Earth’s upper atmosphere can handle. Therefore, airlines may consider a combination of LEO and GEO satellites, or may also wish to harness Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellites as well. When traversing overland routes, 5G ATG technology could also be leveraged for additional capacity.
• Enable Seamless Experiences: Many airports worldwide have invested considerable resources into installing high-performance Wi-Fi networks within their terminals, with an increasing number of sites deploying OpenRoaming to enable travelers to seamlessly transition from the cellular network onto the local Wi-Fi network when they arrive. Yet the customer experience is currently tarnished by the abrupt severing of connectivity when the passengers must leave the terminal to board the aircraft. Instead of requiring travelers to manually reconnect to the aircraft’s network once the flight has departed, OpenRoaming could facilitate the uninterrupted transition from the airport network to the aircraft’s network.