Delta Air Lines Picks Amazon Over Starlink for Future Inflight Wi-Fi

Delta Air Lines is extending its partnership with Amazon, opting to use Amazon’s Leo (Low Earth Orbit) satellites for its inflight Wi-Fi starting in 2028.

The plan is to start with an initial 500 jets starting in 2028 and then expand across its fleet. Right now, Delta mostly uses Viasat to power the inflight Wi-Fi.

For passengers, there shouldn’t be much change aside from the Wi-Fi getting significantly faster. It will still remain free for all Delta SkyMiles members, but will get faster because of how Leo works. Leo, like Starlink, operates on satellites that sit only a few hundred miles above Earth (typical satellites sit somewhere around 22,000 miles above earth), which cuts lag.

Amazon and Delta said in the announcement that Leo will offer download speeds up to 1 Gbps and upload speeds up to 400 Mbps. That’s a 10x to 40x jump in capacity compared to the current system.

Delta, which was the first of the Big Four U.S. airlines to offer free Wi-Fi, is now the last to switch to a LEO provider for that connectivity. While its competitors—United, Southwest, and Alaska—have largely committed to Starlink, Delta is betting on Amazon.

“Delta’s future is global,” Ed Bastian, Delta’s chief executive officer, said in the announcement on Tuesday. “This agreement gives us the best, fastest and most cost-effective technology available to better connect the world today, and it deepens our work with a global leader that shares our ambition to build what’s next—creating even stronger human connection for our people and our customers for years to come.”