Emirates passengers have logged over one million Starlink connections since the service launched seven months ago, with the airline reporting that more than a petabyte of data has already been consumed onboard. Some customers have described the connection as better than their home broadband.
The service currently runs on 33 Boeing 777 aircraft and three Airbus A380s, with more than 60 Starlink-equipped flights departing daily. Installations are continuing at Emirates Engineering facilities in Dubai, and the airline says additional aircraft are joining the Starlink network every week.
Passengers have been using the connection to stream video, join video calls, browse social media and game online, all at no charge regardless of cabin class.
The bandwidth on offer marks a substantial shift from the airline’s early connectivity experiments. When Emirates first introduced onboard internet on the A380, first-generation systems delivered less than 1 Mbps of total aircraft bandwidth. Starlink-equipped A380s are now capable of more than 2 Gbps of combined bandwidth. The A380 installation uses three antennas, designed specifically to handle the aircraft’s double-deck layout and higher passenger numbers.
A planned future addition will bring Live TV streaming into Emirates’ inflight entertainment system, ice. Passengers can already stream live content on personal devices.
The Starlink rollout sits alongside the airline’s wider cabin retrofit programme. Emirates says 128 aircraft have so far completed full cabin refurbishments, covering the introduction of Premium Economy, updated Business and First Class interiors, refreshed Economy cabins, and an expanded entertainment library of more than 6,500 channels.
