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United’s big Starlink Wi-Fi rollout just hit some turbulence.
Many of the initial regional jets that have been already outfitted with Starlink satellites have seen the service turned off due to radio interference, TPG can exclusively report.
So far, United has installed Starlink on nearly two dozen Embraer E175 regional jet aircraft, and over the past few days, all of the flights operated by these jets have operated without internet connectivity.
As for why these planes are offline, the airline has received reports of radio interference between the VHF antennas that pilots use to communicate with air traffic controllers and the Starlink antennas.
Specifically, pilots have been reporting static on the radio lines after completing radio transmissions on aircraft equipped with the new Starlink antennas.
Out of an abundance of caution, United has turned off all Starlink connectivity across its fleet and has since been working with Starlink on a fix.
In a statement confirming TPG’s exclusive report, a United spokesperson shared that “Starlink is now installed on about two dozen United regional aircraft. 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.”
This type of radio interference is not uncommon when rolling out new connectivity solutions onboard aircraft, according to United. The airline also reiterated that this interference does not pose a safety of flight issue.
In fact, back when United launched Viasat connectivity on a portion of its mainline fleet, it also experienced a similar type of interference that required a fast fix.
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The good news is that United and Starlink have already identified a solution for the radio interference, and they’re actively working to roll it out across the affected aircraft.
So far, about a third of affected planes have received the fix and are once again flying with high-speed satellite Wi-Fi, while the remaining planes will be reconnected after the fix is applied.
United will not be pulling planes out of service to apply these fixes; instead, it will wait until the affected planes rotate through regularly scheduled maintenance visits to apply the changes. (This way, United won’t need to cancel any flights to fix the interference issue.)
United is currently planning to have Starlink reenabled on affected aircraft over the next few weeks, but note that this timeline could slip. Of course, this outage will affect hundreds of summertime flyers who might have been excited about trying Starlink on United.
So far, United has exclusively installed Starlink on the Embraer E175 regional jet, and this interference issue is not slowing down the carrier’s planned rollout.
The airline will reconfigure 40 more E175 jets this month, and it’ll then begin doing the same across its CRJ-550 regional jets in the coming weeks.
The airline still plans to have its entire fleet of dual-class United Express regional jets (the CRJ-550 and E175 family of planes) fully reconfigured by the end of the year.
Last fall, United announced that it would retrofit its entire fleet with high-speed Starlink connectivity. And the best part is that connectivity is free. All you need is a MileagePlus account to access the internet on as many devices as you can carry on board.
Related: Inside United Airlines’ plan to bring free Starlink Wi-Fi to every flight
In mid-May, United flew its first revenue flights with Starlink, just about nine months since it first made the bombshell announcement that it would offer one of the best satellite internet solutions aboard its entire fleet.
Hopefully, this interference issue is simply a small bump in the road for the Starlink installations, because United’s existing Wi-Fi solutions are overdue for a big upgrade.
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