United Replaces Viasat and Gogo with Starlink
Starlink at $4.1B/year growing 121%
United replacing both Viasat and Gogo with Starlink shows that airline Wi-Fi is shifting from a nice extra into a core cabin product that needs to work like home broadband. On United, this is not a small route by route pilot. It is a fleet standardization move. One network, one install plan, and one passenger experience across regional jets and larger narrowbodies matters because the old setup split United between different hardware, different performance ceilings, and different operating workflows.
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The practical difference is network design. Gogo built much of its business on North America air to ground links, while Viasat commercial aviation has relied heavily on geostationary satellites roughly 22,000 miles up. Starlink uses low earth orbit satellites a few hundred miles up, which cuts delay enough for video, gaming, and live apps to work more naturally in the cabin.
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A full replacement also simplifies airline operations. United said in March 2025 that the FAA had approved Starlink on the Embraer 175 and that it planned to equip about 300 E175s by year end, then by early 2026 said it had installed Starlink on more than 300 regional aircraft and expected more than 500 mainline aircraft by the end of 2026. That points to a single platform becoming the default across much of the fleet.
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For incumbents, this matters because United had already been a live proof point for both legacy models. Viasat highlighted United 737 MAX deliveries in its Delta announcement, and Gogo still reports thousands of business aircraft on its systems while repositioning toward multi orbit products like Galileo. The market is moving from satellite access sold as bandwidth to connectivity sold as a consumer grade onboard experience.
The next phase is airline wide consolidation around providers that can deliver streaming quality internet with simpler installs and fewer performance compromises. If Starlink keeps turning early wins like United, Hawaiian, and Alaska into fleet standards, airline connectivity will start to look less like a patchwork of vendors and more like a winner take most infrastructure market.