Delta announces wi-fi deal with Starlink competitor Amazon Leo – but not until 2028
At this point you’re probably bored of me writing about Starlink, the satellite internet service operated by SpaceX and currently being installed across thousands of aircraft globally.
Air France, British Airways, Emirates, Qatar Airways, United, Virgin Atlantic and many, many more are all installing the transformative technology.
Whilst Starlink was first, it’s not the only game in town. Amazon has been working on its own low earth orbit (LEO) constellation of communications satellites and currently has just over 200 in orbit. It says it needs over 500 satellites to begin initial operations, and plans to field over 3,000 in total.
Originally codenamed Project Kuiper, Amazon rebranded the service as ‘Amazon Leo’, a play on the acronym for low earth orbit and the zodiac star sign (and presumably the launch of a cute Lion mascot?!)
JetBlue was the first airline to pen an agreement with Amazon Leo last September. As far as I know, no other airlines have announced a deal – partly, perhaps, because Amazon isn’t ready for deployment yet and won’t be for at least another year.
Amazon Leo now has its second airline customer: Delta. It says it will install Amazon Leo on an inital 500 aircraft from 2028 onwards.
It puts Delta in an interesting position. It was one of the first airlines to offer free unlimited in-flight wi-fi to flyers back in 2023, using previous generation satellite technology from Viasat. This offered decent speeds (Delta says “streaming-quality”) and has been rolled out to over 1,150 aircraft.
It is not low latency, high speed low earth orbit technology, however. Delta has quickly gone from being a leader to being a follower, and Delta flyers will have to wait at least two more years until it can match the speeds found on airlines rolling out Starlink, including its competitor United.
The technical details
Like Starlink, Amazon Leo relies on a constellation of thousands of satellites continuously orbiting at what is considered ‘low earth orbit’ between 160km – 1,200km above the Earth (for reference, the International Space Station orbits at around 400km).
When complete, Amazon Leo will comprise three orbital ‘shells’: one at 590km, one at 610km and a final one at 630km. Each satellite will be moving at speeds of around 25,000km/h, which means they orbit the earth once every 90 minutes or so.
Satellites connect to the internet via one of twelve ground stations located at strategic locations around the world and also have inter-satellite laser links so that data can be passed from one satellite to the next (this is useful across vast oceans and the polar regions, where it is impossible to build ground stations.)
To connect to the satellites, Delta will install an aviation grade version of Amazon’s most powerful antenna, the Leo Ultra. This is, according to the company, the ‘fastest commercial phased array antenna in production’ with download speeds of up to 1Gbps and upload speeds of 400Mbps.
(Whether this means Delta only needs to install one antenna per aircraft, unlike the multi-antenna installations common with Starlink, is unclear.)
Like Starlink antenna, this is expected to be sleeker and lighter than existing satellite antennas, making it more efficient to fly.
Conclusion
Whilst we have yet to test Amazon Leo, the underlying technology is the same as Starlink and I have no doubt it will offer comparable performance.
It’s good to see Delta back a competitor to Starlink – no industry should be reliant on just one company for such crucial technology – although the delayed roll-out means passengers won’t see the benefit for at least two years.
By the time Delta starts rolling out this service, many other airlines will have completed their fleet installations, leaving Delta to play catch-up to the new industry standard.