United Airlines Taps Elon Musk's Starlink for In-Flight Wi-Fi

https://www.wsj.com/business/airlines/united-airlines-musk-starlink-flight-wifi-0f323fcc

by kylehotchkiss • 2 years ago

13 9 2 years ago

lxgr• 2 years ago

Wow, the air sure is getting thinner for Viasat!

Hawaiian Airlines is already on Starlink; most other US carriers are Viasat based at this point, which still doesn't have coverage over the Pacific (due to the deployment failure of Viasat-3 F1) and are probably getting annoyed at this point. (Word is that Viasat is trying to salvage 10% of the capacity of 3F1 [1] and ultimately move it elsewhere.)

I bet nobody will be really unhappy about the significantly lower latency either...

The only thing that the incumbents seem to have going for them at this point is being available as an Airbus line fit as part of HBCplus – once Starlink is an option there, things are going to get interesting.

[1] https://spacenews.com/viasat-preparing-to-start-services-fro...

mensetmanusman2• 2 years ago

Amazing that Elon was the only one crazy enough to put his money behind such a complex goal.

gamblor9562• 2 years ago

What's even more amazing is that 99% of the money behind SpaceX is outside investors and the government.

Even when it was founded, Musk was a minority equity investor.

pirate787• 2 years ago

This is easily shown as false. Musk was the majority founder and multiple news accounts say Musk still controls 78% of voting shares and there's no evidence the federal government owns any part of SpaceX. https://fcc.report/IBFS/SAT-MOD-20181108-00083/1569858.pdf

signatoremo• 2 years ago

Musk was a minority investor when SpaceX was founded in 2002? Who were the other owners and how much did they own?

ryzvonusef2• 2 years ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20120313030030/http://www.forbes...

Even as late as 2012, Musk owned 2/3rds of SpaceX. This is after Falcon 9 was a successful product and they were starting to get NASA launches. He currently owns 54%.

SpaceX was founded with his own money from the Paypal sale, by December 2008 he was nearly bankrupt after multiple failed launches.

Please provide evidence for you assertions.

mensetmanusman2• 2 years ago

Uhh, investors got at least a 10x return, good for them.

United Airlines Taps Elon Musk's Starlink for In-Flight Wi-Fi

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