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Recently, we had Hawaiian Airlines confirm that it now offers a ‘fast and free’ Starlink wifi service across all of its aircraft and we’ve seen United Airlines announce that it will start rolling out free Starlink wifi to its customers from next year, and now Air France says that it will be joining in.
In a press release that was sent out earlier today, Air France confirmed that starting next year, it will ‘progressively roll out ultra-high-speed connectivity service for a ground-like experience’ which will be free of charge in all cabins for customers with a Flying Blue account.
This new service will be supplied by Starlink, and just as United Airlines told us, Air France says that the new service will allow its flyers to watch live TV, stream movies and TV shows, enjoy online gaming and, obviously, access the internet and send/receive emails.
Customers will be able to use multiple devices (simultaneously) to use the new service and it will be available to anyone who has a smartphone, tablet, or laptop onboard.
It’s possible that the Air France inflight entertainment system will also allow customers to connect to the new Starlink service, but as this isn’t mentioned in the press release, that’s not a certainty.
The airline hasn’t said how long the rollout of the Starlink service will take (probably quite some time given that it has over 200 aircraft to refit), but it has confirmed that the first aircraft to be refitted will get the new technology in the ‘summer 2025 season’ and that during the transition phase, it will continue to offer Flying Blue members the free ‘Message Pass’ that they currently get as well as continuing to offer the paid-for services that are onboard right now.
The one thing that worries me a little is something that I noticed right at the end of the press release.
In the section ‘About Starlink’ we’re told that ‘Starlink delivers broadband internet capable of supporting streaming, online gaming, video calls and more’ and I’m hoping that this is just a general comment on what Starlink *can* offer and not what it *will* offer, because I’ll will actively avoid any airline that permits any kind of call to be made onboard.
It’s bad enough having to deal with the idiots on the ground who don’t think twice about disturbing others as they make their video/speakerphone calls while hanging out in public places, but having to deal with them in a sealed composite tube at 36,000ft would be a whole new level of annoyance.
Hopefully, Air France has no intention of permitting calls of any sort onboard regardless of how easily its new wifi can support them.
Anyway …
Now that Air France is joining Hawaiian Airlines, United Airlines, and Qatar Airways in installing Starlink’s high speed internet on its aircraft and promising to make it free of charge, it looks like this is the path that the industry will end up going down, so it will be interesting to see what effect this will have on airlines that don’t offer this as standard.
Will we see a flurry of other major carriers joining the Starlink party? And if we do, at what point will Starlink have to start turning airlines away because it doesn’t have the capacity to support high speed wifi on so many aircraft at once?
This will be interesting to watch.
Bottom line
Air France has said that starting in summer 2025 (sometime between April and October), its fleet will gradually be equipped with the latest technology that will allow it to offer Starlink’s high speed wifi service to all passengers with a Flying Blue account.
The service will be complimentary across all cabins and, we’re told, will give passengers a ‘ground-like’ experience.
