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Inflight Starlink WiFi has been described as a “game changer” by a lot of people that have had a chance to try it out so the fact that British Airways and Iberia have just become the latest airlines to announce that they plan to offer fee high-speed Starlink WiFi to all passengers is very good news.
British Airways & Starlink
BA says that it plans to start fitting its aircraft with Starlink WiFi in 2026 and that once fitted, high-speed inflight WiFi will be free for all passengers regardless of cabin or elite status.
Interestingly, however, the airline hasn’t said which aircraft will get the new technology first nor has it mentioned when it expects the Starlink rollout to be complete.
This is a little problematic because when it comes to WiFi rollouts, British Airways doesn’t have the greatest of track records. It has taken an age for the airline to equip the majority of its fleet with the current WiFi equipment that it uses and there are still aircraft in the BA fleet on which WiFi isn’t installed.
The fact is that British Airways is great at promising its passengers great things in the future, but it’s not very good at actually delivering anything great in a timely manner – customers are still waiting for a working app, a working website, and a lot more that was promised quite a few years ago – so without a firm timeline attached to the Starlink rollout, I’m going to assume that we probably won’t see the BA fleet fully equipped with high-speed Starlink WiFi much before the end of the decade even though the equipment is, apparently, easy to install.
Iberia & Starlink
Just like British Airways, Iberia has, today, announced that thanks to the deal struck between IAG (Iberia and BA’s parent company) and Starlink, it will soon begin to offer free high-speed WiFi service to all passengers on its long-haul and short-haul flights.
Also like its sister airline, Iberia hasn’t said when it expects the Starlink rollout to be complete or which routes will be first to get Starlink service, but given that Iberia has a much smaller fleet than BA, given that Iberia only operates Airbus aircraft, and given that Iberia hasn’t got the same awful WiFi implementation record as British Airways, I would expect the rollout to be relatively swift (once it has been started).
Bottom line
Thanks to a new agreement between IAG and Starlink, both British Airways and Iberia have today announced that they will begin rolling out free high-speed WiFi on their routes at some point in 2026.
Given how slow British Airways have been to implement any positive measures over the past few years, no one should be expecting to see the airline offering free high-speed WiFi across the whole of its fleet any time soon (if they have it done in under 4 years I’ll be amazed).
When it comes to Iberia, however, my hopes are higher, and if the airline gets moving on retrofits in early 2026, there’s every chance that most (if not all) of its fleet will offer Starlink by the end of 2027.
