United Airlines Shuts Down Starlink WiFi Service on Its Planes After the Antennaes Caused Problems With Its Jets' Equipment
Air travel in America has been beset with headline-making troubles, from a shortage of air traffic controllers to Boeing planes suffering from catastrophic quality control.
Now add Starlink equipment — yes, SpaceX's satellite-based internet provider — that's interfering with radio communications on some United Airlines regional jets, according to The Wall Street Journal, leading the airline to shut down the WiFi service aboard its Embraer E175 jets.
Whenever they communicated with air traffic controllers, pilots were getting static interference on their radio transmission, which was then linked to the recent installation of Starlink antennae. The WSJ reports that the airline doesn't think it was a safety issue.
"Starlink is now installed on about two dozen United regional aircraft," read a statement from the airline, published by The Points Guy, which first broke the story. "United and Starlink teams are working together to address a small number of reports of static interference during the operation of the Wi-Fi system, which is fairly common with any new airline Wi-Fi provider. We expect the service to be back up and running on these aircraft soon."
Presumably the airline is now hard at work making that happen.
Airplane safety was thrown into high relief earlier this year when a helicopter collided with an airplane in Washington, DC, which killed more than 60 people.
Besides safety, another hidden concern is Musk's increasing entanglement with critical parts of the nation's infrastructure, from DOGE to SpaceX rockets being used to ferry astronauts back and forth between Earth and the International Space Station.
Despite Musk's recent falling out with Trump over federal spending, Musk and his companies remain pillars of transportation and commerce. There appears to be no plans to phase out SpaceX spacecraft, for instance, regardless of grandstanding from Trump.
The inclusion of the Starlink equipment on airplanes is just another piece to Musk's growing empire — and evidence that society relies on him a lot, whether for good or ill.
More on Starlink: Something Surprising Is Destroying Elon Musk's Starlink Satellites
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