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Starlink unlimited aviation plan to rise from $10k/month to $20k
- BoppreH 2mo agoNote that this is for the "aviation plan" which already requires six-digits equipment.
- vel0city 2mo agoYeah, for regular people they're just starting to suddenly charge $1,500 fees. https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/1uklz4q/starlink_1500_dollar_demand_surcharge/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/1uklz4q/starlink_...
- r3trohack3r 2mo ago> He then reviewed my billing history and account details, confirmed that my service address had never actually changed, and determined that nothing had been moved. As a result, he issued a full refund.
- BoorishBears 2mo agoYeah but it still sounds like $1,500 demand fee was not a mistake, charging OP was the mistake. People first mentioned these fees at like $100... now you can go to Costco, grab a Starlink, and they'll randomly ask for $1,500 to actually start service. Congestion is a thing when each node needs to go to space, but it also feels like they're cashing in on years of "just move to a cabin in the woods and work off Starlink"... once you've done that they have you by the balls even worse than a typical ISP.
- wat10000 2mo agoIsn't this fee specifically before they have you by the balls?
- BoorishBears 2mo agoNot unless you had a potential $1500 fee top of mind before you moved... Wanna guess if Starlink is advertising how insane these fees have gotten?
- wat10000 2mo agoLet me guess... if you put the address into their handy text box, they tell you exactly what the demand surcharge is going to be for that location? I tried it, and would you look at that, I was right. I guess if you buy an entire house without checking to see what it costs to get internet service at that location, then you might be in a tough spot. Hard to blame it on anyone else though.
- bigbadfeline 2mo ago> I guess if you buy an entire house without checking We aren't talking about people buying hoses now, these fees weren't there before, so it becomes a typical bait and switch. "Congestion charge" means the starlink network lacks sufficient capacity to accommodate the areas that need it the most and where it was advertised the most. https://tech.yahoo.com/transportation/articles/elon-musk-charging-starlink-customers-170100747.html https://tech.yahoo.com/transportation/articles/elon-musk-cha... Jul 5, 2026The congestion charge was quietly added back in 2024, starting out as a one-time $100 fee, depending on location. By June 2025, that number grew to up to $1,000 in parts of the country, as PCMag reported at the time. As of last month, surcharges can hit $1,500.
- wat10000 2mo agoThey're not applying these retroactively. (They did so in the reddit link above, but that was a mistake that they fixed.) The only way you'd have this problem is if you check before you buy, see that it's not there, buy the place, then move in and find out that a surcharge was added in the meantime. That would suck, but I suppose it's a risk you run if you don't lock in your deal ahead of time, and you choose to move somewhere with only one good provider.
- naturalmovement 2mo agoIf you're privileged enough to work a six-figure tech job while engaging in a homesteader larp in a "cabin in the woods", you can probably afford the fee. So can "off-grid" YouTuber grifters. It's like everyone feels entitled to something they didn't know existed a few years ago.
- Cyberdogs7 2mo agoSo we should let companies do what ever anti-consumer practices they want, because you don't like the group they are doing it to? Should a car company be allowed to charge you an extra fee every time you have a passenger?
- naturalmovement 2mo agoIf you need a specialized amphibious vehicle to get to your shack in the woods, it's not anti-consumer if it costs you more than a Mitsubishi Mirage.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2mo agoThe world is more than rich tech bros living in the woods. Normal income people also wanted to use this service without being bankrupted. Rural homes do have roads that can be reached on a rusty pickup.
- ben_w 2mo agoA few days ago people were telling me the Starlink was brilliant because it gave small African villages with no mains electricity an internet connection to share. This kind of behaviour does rather dampen the value proposition for such people.
- naturalmovement 2mo agoDo you think tech bros who voluntarily choose to live in the woods should pay the same subsidized price as a rural African schoolhouse? Equity and all that.
- vel0city 2mo agoSo not his service address, but a slightly different latitude/longitude would have received that.
- wat10000 2mo agoHis address would have received it too, if he was starting new service. It's only for new customers, they're not hitting existing customers with the charge. The error was that putting in the address made it look like he had moved, which counts as new service.
- cortesoft 2mo agoIt sounds like this was a bug where slight updates to geolocation data (his address updated its physical location, probably to be more accurate) triggered a "location moved" process. Annoying, but not indicative of a new policy.
- engineer_22 2mo agoFurnishing low-latency, broadband connectivity to private aircraft. The Challenger 350 noted in the article stickers north of $10M
- engineer_22 2mo agoFor comparison, If you live in a $300,000 home and pay $100/month for internet you’re paying 0.4% per year for the service. If you own a $15,000,000 jet and pay $20,000/month for internet you’re paying 1.6% per year for the service. By this comparison, we might say private jet owners are paying 4x more for their internet on their plane.
- toomuchtodo 2mo agoThey are attempting to juice revenue across all product cohorts, this is simply another datapoint. Customers are captive until there are more connectivity options.
- nelsonic 2mo ago“Juice?” As in they have the best product by a wide margin and are charging a totally fair price for it that reflects demand. Nobody flying private cares about the price of Starlink. It’s worse if they are squeezing people in underserved rural areas… our monthly has gone down from €35 to €29 and still getting the same speed. The second SpaceX offers direct-to-cell in our area we will switch to their service as we’ve never had any issues with it whereas the incumbent mobile/broadband providers regularly throttle even when we’re paying top tier prices. Totally agree there needs to be more competition and preferably not from other billionaires … but until then, Starlink is great!
- toomuchtodo 2mo agoSpaceX has a monopoly on high speed satellite internet. They will extract as much as they can from customers with said monopoly until there is a competitor. Doesn't sound like we're talking past each other except perhaps you might be a fan and I am not (specifically, extractionist monopolist behavior).
- nelsonic 2mo agoDon’t think anyone except Peter Thiel and Hasbro will argue that Monopoly is a good thing. ;-) SpaceX has made the investments/innovation to better-serve the satellite internet market that already had players in it; HughesNet, Viasat, Iridium / Globalstar. Those were the price-gouging Oligopolist incumbents who Starlink is disrupting with a 10x better service for considerably cheaper. Totally agree that SpaceX doubling the price from $10k/month to $20k looks really bad especially if they’re doing it to existing customers. But the way I see this (as a non-private-jet-traveler) is: Starlink is doing a “Robin Hood” and making the Rich (who can all easily afford it) pay for the expansion of the service which will benefit all the rest of customers. And if the 0.01% decide to switch to an alternative supplier, that’s good for competition. So in a way it’s anti-monopolist. ;-)
- Rebelgecko 2mo agoThey also recently doubled the price of the standby plan
- napierzaza 2mo ago[dead]
- throwitaway222 2mo agoStarlink should probably reverse course on this however, it's one thing to pay 10k for up to 20 guests on a small private jet vs a company like Delta with a fleet of 747s. Charge Delta 20k, charge this guy 10k.
- theturtletalks 2mo agoWhy would they not charge as much as possible? Who else is launching satellites? He’s got one of the biggest moats I’ve ever seen.
- fallingbananna 2mo agoI don't know who else is launching satellites, but many airlines do offer wifi, often via partnerships with telco companies. It's just expensive and slow. So the only moat I see (as a layman) is the speed and capacity. The one flight that I was on that had Starlink, had better internet during the flight, than most airports have on the ground.
- matwood 2mo ago> The one flight that I was on that had Starlink, had better internet during the flight, than most airports have on the ground. When it comes to internet, this IS the moat.
- SoftTalker 2mo agoPassengers who want en route internet will demand it. The cost won't matter because that will be expensed. They will want the performance.
- DougN7 2mo agoASTS - though I think their satellites are supposed to connect to phone hardware
- 7e 2mo agoAmazon Leo has about 350 in orbit now, on their way to 7,500.
- p-o 2mo agoHard to not look at the crazy valuation of SpaceX and not see a correlation. At some point, something's gotta give.
- idontwantthis 2mo agoUnfortunately, their valuation has almost nothing to do with starlink revenues. It’s almost entirely speculative oribital data centers that have not been invented yet. They could double their starlink revenues and it would have no impact on the valuation.
- _doctor_love 2mo agoWasn't it Jeff Skilling who once waxed poetical about hypothetical future value?
- croes 2mo agoEven if invented, what is the advantage of orbit data centers?
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2mo agoThe best I have heard: It makes you fully independent of the terrestrial energy grid. There is also some nebulous freedom from governmental authority possibilities. Both of which strike me as poor arguments. We are in a short term energy crunch. I expect within five years that most of the energy problems will be resolved and the eye watering financials of launching a GPU into space will look absurd Governments also do not like to cede authority, so I find it hard to believe that they will not claim jurisdiction over any business operating within their borders (all of those ground stations).
- bakies 2mo agoif you launch enough solar panels to power the data center into space, its easier to put them on the ground. Yeah there's some less power, but also have six times the lifespan so just build twice as many and it's still more efficient. Getting land in Texas can't be that hard.
- panative 2mo agoWon’t somebody please think of the luxury private aviation consumers?
- Finnucane 2mo agoRich people are screwing over the slightly less rich, get out the silver pitchforks.
- scottyah 2mo agoI don't think spacex is rolling in cash. Their valuation has little bearing on cash reserves until they sell.
- estearum 2mo agoA lot of people on this forum actually have investments in SpaceX, directly or indirectly, and they're interested in this stuff as a signal of the health of the company. Not everything has to be some little gripefest.
- meristohm 2mo agoI reckon a lot of people on this forum have poorer health thanks to man-made pollution. The more money a person has, the greater the chance they spend it in ways that increase environmental harm. (Travel is a big one, and buying large homes, remodeling homes, heating and cooling those homes, well beyond the private sufficiency that would be enough for us if we also supported public luxuries instead of playing Smaug) Rather than corporate health I'm more concerned with ecosystem health (actual eco-system, as in interconnected living beings, not the word applied to software...), and care much more about investing in the performance of the ecosystems (based on land, water, and air) that sustain life in the region I have this tiny bit of influence on. Corporations are fictions, a game we're playing. After they go up in smoke, the land will still be here.
- panative 2mo agoWon’t somebody please think of the poor SpaceX shareholders? (Not that the article was framed that way.)
- ihsw 2mo ago[dead]
- delichon 2mo agoAt the other end they recently doubled the cost of the Starlink Mini standby plan, from $60 to $120 per year.
- rsyring 2mo agoI have a Starlink v2 dish and I pay $10 per month for a residential "standby" plan. I only get 10G per month of bandwidth but I rarely use it since I have a fiber connection that is mostly reliable. It might be a grandfathered plan because they don't list it anywhere I can see: - https://starlink.com/service-plans - https://starlink.com/roam Edit: turns out this is a feature/mode and not a plan: https://starlink.com/na/support/article/37bb3b47-9525-7224-5f0a-6d016ce26975 https://starlink.com/na/support/article/37bb3b47-9525-7224-5... And, apparently, I now have to reactivate the service to one of the published plans if I want to use more than low-speed data. Previously, I still had high-speed bandwidth for $10 a month just not a lot of it. They must have changed things recently. And, now that I'm thinking about it, I probably skimmed an email that said something about this a month or two ago but, since the charge was staying at $10 a month, didn't pay much attention to the details.
- throwitaway222 2mo agoI noticed this too, but decided to keep my mini because I downgraded my max plan (I was defaulted to this as a customer since they started) to a bitrate I still won't reach, and by doing so am saving $480 per year.
- palmotea 2mo ago> At the other end they recently doubled the cost of the Starlink Mini standby plan, from $60 to $120 per year. I kinda wanted to get one of those for standby, but the price seemed too good to be true, so I figured they'd either eliminate it or raise the price.
- behnamoh 2mo agoAs I write this, I'm disputing a charge from Starlink because when I activated mine, they automatically started the free trial for me, but nowhere in the receipt or on their website did they say they would switch me to the most expensive plan after the free trial was over. And they made it extremely confusing to cancel my free trial. So I ended up being charged $120 for something that I had just opened out of the box. I disputed it twice through Apple Card and it still got rejected, even though I have the invoices. So I'm disputing it a third time, and I know one thing is clear: I am never going to purchase anything that Elon has made ever again. They also lied to me about the cost of keeping the Starlink. Their app said the satellite would need to stay "alive," and to do so I had to pay $5 a month. But then I recently realized that that was also a lie—you don't have to pay to keep the service or the satellite alive.
- pfdietz 2mo agoAs a matter of personal policy I never sign up for free trials, for just this sort of reason.
- petilon 2mo agoApple Card aka Goldman Sachs is notoriously bad at handling disputes. They were fined $89 million for mishandling disputes, yet they continue to reject disputes offhand [1]. I no longer use Apple Card other than for Apple Store purchases. [1] https://www.consumerfinance.gov/archive/newsroom/cfpb-orders-apple-and-goldman-sachs-to-pay-over-89-million-for-apple-card-failures/ https://www.consumerfinance.gov/archive/newsroom/cfpb-orders...
- inemesitaffia 2mo agoHe has a misconception of how Starlink billing works.
- scottyah 2mo agoWho's your target audience for this... misinformation? > charged $120 for something that I had just opened out of the box It does not work out of the box, you need to install an app, add a payment method, and sign up for a plan, free trial or not. >you don't have to pay to keep the service or the satellite alive Not sure what you mean by keeping a satellite alive, but you do need to pay for the service. There is no "Free" or "Pay as You Go" plan. Also, the Standby Mode $10/mo, not $5. As for it being "extremely confusing", that's highly subjective so I won't comment, but it's definitely standard UI and I think it took me less than 8 clicks to first downgrade then cancel my plan.
- kamranjon 2mo agoI am traveling in Europe currently and got a Saily SIM card - 5g coverage is really good and seems to be expanding fast - a small village I visited 2 years ago that had no cell coverage at all I was getting 250mbps download, faster than than the wired internet at most of the places I was visiting. This prompted me to actually look into Starlink speeds and apparently 5g is generally faster than Starlink... This made me wonder if Starlink is a much more niche product than I thought - I actually thought it was significantly faster than cell data - but it seems it's just for folks in super remote areas at this point?
- esseph 2mo ago> but it seems it's just for folks in super remote areas at this point? TBF that's like 70% of the US, large parts of the Southern Hemisphere in general, much of China, India, Russia, etc. But yes, StarLink is best when it has some user density but not too much user density. It will be this way until... probably forever. If I go camping? StarLink. Otherwise no cell/internet service.
- kamranjon 2mo ago70% seems a little extreme? Here is a helpful mobile coverage map: https://www.fcc.gov/BroadbandData/MobileMaps/mobile-map https://www.fcc.gov/BroadbandData/MobileMaps/mobile-map A few years ago I actually traveled all around the US and worked remotely with a 4g unlimited data sim card and was pretty amazed at the coverage, only very few places was I left without coverage. I'm guessing it's even better now?
- esseph 2mo agoYou should spend more time out west or midwest in places like: Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma, Washington, North Dakota, or head up to Alaska, etc. There are a lot of places in and around the Appalachian and Blue Ridge mountains that have no service. Note: I know a lot of rural ISPs serving these markets, or that have been trying to for decades - I know precisely when StarLink will work like crap or be great for the customer (given options at all).
- justapassenger 2mo agoI’m pretty sure rest of starlink customers will get similar treatment in the future. Their potential customer base is limited and it’s only ISP that literately burns their backbone network every few years and has to replace to keep it running. On top of that, their claims it’s profitable does some heavy lifting with how to account for the cost of launching rockets. It’s extremely cool product and very useful for many customers. But sustainability of current pricing is very questionable.
- mattmaroon 2mo agoTheir potential customer base is literally everybody because they are the only ISP that can cover the entire globe. Everybody’s potential customer base is technically limited because there are only so many humans, but they have the least limited potential customer base of anything that exists.
- novafunc 2mo agoYes, but the primary reason for Starlink is for areas with poor traditional ISPs. If you had a choice between Fiber or Starlink, you’d choose Fiber. So as traditional ISPs improve service and coverage, Starlink becomes less in demand.
- grim_io 2mo agoSounds like a great long-term investment. Starlink would only make sense if the world was not getting more and more concentrated around densely populated areas.
- scottyah 2mo agoI think it'd be easier for Starlink to start building and deploying wide area ground stations (like 5g towers or something) to serve urban areas than it would take all the other telcos to deploy satellites.
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- ForOldHack 2mo agoSurprise, surprise, surprise. Well, well well. The honeymoon is over. It's just so predictable.
- epistasis 2mo agoGotta pay the massive coupons on SpaceX's bonds, whose yields are heading towards junk territory: https://www.ft.com/content/3a023b95-66c3-41e1-b0ce-df752a499541 https://www.ft.com/content/3a023b95-66c3-41e1-b0ce-df752a499... Having just flown some flights with Starlink internet connection, I really love the service, it's just amazing. But the rugpull here might actually break through the distortion field of Musk. It's really interesting to compare the reality distortion fields of Elon Musk and Steve Jobs. It took a looooooong time for Apple stock to get properly valued in the 2000s, after it was clear that they would take over consumer computing. Jobs' RDF worked amazingly well on aligning engineering towards consumer needs, and towards convincing consumers and (some) reviewers that they had created the right sort of products for the future. Elon Musk seems to have mastered RDF on investors plus consumers, and when you're chasing sky high valuations by always piling your prior failed "ideas" into your next big thing (i.e. next big gamble), it only takes a few bad gambles to bring down the entire house of cards.
- scottyah 2mo agoAt the end of the day, there's the people who can make a vastly superior product time and time again, and they all like to work with other people who can do the same. They like to be pushed, they love solving hard problems, hate bureaucracy, and will find leaders that can accommodate all that. Elon provides that the same as Steve did.
- ben_w 2mo ago> people who can make a vastly superior product time and time again, and they all like to work with other people who can do the same These parts are likely pushing the best minds away from Musk these days. Not sure when that turned, perhaps Cybertruck?
- epistasis 2mo agoI agree, though honestly it starts with any of Musk's product presentation events, which, frankly are all absolutely terrible compared to what Jobs would put on. Musk is good at getting money, he is not good at product design. Jobs had amazing taste, Musk has terrible taste. If Musk has a talent beyond raising money, it can be in making bold management moves, at least that's what I hear from CEOs that admire Musk. But I think in the past five years all the bold choices have not been so fantastic. Cybertruck was when people started to see that the emperor had no clothes, i think.
- jameskraus 2mo agoIt is an reckless business practice to not have the monthly price locked down, with strong contractual protections. Sounds like Correnti didn't negotiate well and are now finding out.
- e_i_pi_2 2mo agoAgreed with this, and it also doesn't seem like this is the case but I'm generally a fan of charging B2B as high as possible to lower costs for regular consumers - other companies will generally pay a lot more even if it just includes the potential of getting better support, and that profit can be used to give access to more people at a lower price. A lot of open source software uses this model - free for everyone, but if you're a company that wants support then you have to pay for it, and that covers the development for everyone
- smt88 2mo agoThe aviation pricing will be passed to consumers either way, as increased fares or in-flight fees.
- josephcsible 2mo agoThe price increased by $10,000 per month. United's 737-800's seat 166 passengers, so assuming each plane has 5 flights per day, that would only make the average ticket about 40 cents more expensive.
- w10-1 2mo ago> Sounds like Correnti didn't negotiate well Are you sure this is negotiable?
- jameskraus 2mo agoIf price protection for something like this isn't negotiable it's a huge business risk, which would also be reckless to take on.
- 2mo ago
- petilon 2mo agoBlue Origin's Terawave [1] can't come soon enough. [1] https://www.blueorigin.com/terawave https://www.blueorigin.com/terawave
- sucrosesucrose 2mo agoWhat we need is a public service constellation, not more billonaire ones.
- petilon 2mo agoYou could say that about electricity, water supply, healthcare, AI, etc. These should all be public services, not run by for-profit corporations. But we decided against that approach long ago.
- consumer451 2mo agoIs it possible that you meant Amazon Leo? I thought Terawave was for terrestrial station backhaul.
- petilon 2mo agoYes I meant Leo. But Terawave is also satellite based, it looks like.
- consumer451 2mo agoYes, Terawave is satellite based, but I believe it's not for moving stations like airplanes, and instead for many Gbps from point to point backhaul for data centers. This is what I thought laser-based Starlink was going to quickly move into, back in the day. A space-based Internet backbone is pretty cool.
- w10-1 2mo agoNote that the objection is as much to the abruptness as the scale of the price increase. Large customers sinking millions into (here aviation) assets rightly expect that their vendors respect their market lifecycles. Starlink's behavior creates a credibility gap that could drive such customers to the 2-3 upcoming competitors with poorer service and even higher costs, but perhaps more reliability as partners. I'd see this as an opportunity.
- huslage 2mo agoThe "upcoming" is doing a lot of work. There is not currently a viable alternative to Starlink with the same capability, speed, or latency. Amazon Leo will be the next to go online and it won't be fully operational until sometime in 2028. No one in the aviation industry will want to wait for that.
- consumer451 2mo agoDelta and JetBlue appear to be waiting for Amazon Leo, and it seems to be coming online in 2027, not 2028.
- khurs 2mo ago> Note that the objection is as much to the abruptness as the scale of the price increase. When companies buy a service, they normally agree a bespoke contract for 5 years or so and a fixed price for additional units, often with an option of a further x years period too. So sounds like there wasn't a bespoke contract as lawyers should have picked it up.
- khurs 2mo agoThere will be many price increases seeing as: -SpaceX raised $75bn in the IPO which will only last so long for a loss making high capital requirements company. -Then $25bn via bonds which have an annual interest rate repayment of $1.46 billion + repayment of the $25b (depending on bond length in years 2031,33,36,46 and 2056) -Morgan Stanley said: "In our model, we estimate SpaceX raising an average of $72bn annually between 2027 and 2030 and then an average of $95bn annually between 2031 and 2034."[0] So huge amounts needed continuously. [0]https://www.ft.com/content/09a62ed4-16af-433c-adb7-c877d1975388?syn-25a6b1a6=1 https://www.ft.com/content/09a62ed4-16af-433c-adb7-c877d1975...
- jerlam 2mo agoSpaceX stock has also dropped below their IPO price. It doesn't change their current financials but it may make it more difficult to raise money in the future.
- khurs 2mo agoWill be interesting to see if Elon regrets only floating 4% [0] of the company at the IPO and not more seeing as it was over subscribed. [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-ipo-spcx-stock-free-float-volatility-elon-musk-nasdaq-2026-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-ipo-spcx-stock-free-f...
- bakies 2mo agodoes low float and high demand drive the price up? the article just says more volatility which makes sense, but over subscribed would make me think it would have a higher price. Everyone is already bailing on their positions?
- tcp_handshaker 2mo agoYou missing the point...the 4% that is what caused the artificial scarcity.
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- CamelCaseName 2mo agoThis is so par for the course for Elon's companies. He will extract as much as possible, whenever possible.
- grim_io 2mo agoYou don't get to be all of the USA's GDP without a buck or two more per month, you know?
- khurs 2mo ago>SpaceX has also increased the price of its Starlink Aviation equipment to $200,000 per business aircraft, up from $145,000 last year. ouch.
- 1234letshaveatw 2mo agoWon't someone think of the aviators!!
- TimTheTinker 2mo agoBrand-new Cessna planes were selling for roughly 2x the US median annual income in the 1960s. Today that number is at around 5.5x. I've always wanted to fly my wife & kids in a plane, but I just can't afford a high-maintenance luxury asset that costs as much as a house, and fuel costs are prohibitive as well. so yeah, if someone could mass-manufacture an FAA MOSAIC-certified light-sport aircraft with >2 seats, that could bring the cost of fractional ownership and once-every-two-months weekend use down to my level. And if small local air strips could stop closing too, that'd be great. --- All to say, aviation used to be semi-reachable as a middle class hobby for family people. Now, the only way to get a family in the air for people like me is to spend years building a kit plane from scratch or fixing up a cheap broken plane.
- 1234letshaveatw 2mo agour wife and kid will want in flight wifi
- TimTheTinker 2mo agoOur family is used to not having it on flights. Just bring a book or download a movie ahead of time to the iPad
- bakies 2mo agoI wonder how this compares with non-starlink aircraft ISP? Was/Is Delta using something else? Their internet has been good for a while.
- theturtletalks 2mo agoWhat’s even more concerning is that the current government changed their requirements for the rural broadband program so companies like StarLink can bid to bring internet to those remote areas instead of using wired or fiber connections. Not far-fetched that StarLink wins this contract and then squeezes those customers over time. ISPs will have little reason to expand in those underserved areas without government subsidies.
- inemesitaffia 2mo agoAmazon LEO was the primary beneficiary
- hughes 2mo agoThere is a nuance missed in the discussion so far - Starlink is creating a new product level, differentiating service between continental and intercontinental aviation connectivity. Previously these were a single category. If you are operating in North America for example, your service is going from $10k to $12.5k. Still a 25% increase, which is not fun, but I think a lot of the customers affected by this will fit into this category. You only need the $20k plan if your aircraft travels between their roughly-continental regions. Nicholas Air, quoted in the article, appears to have no need for the $20k plan and should not use it.
- ck2 2mo agoisn't Amazon LEO now available or very soon at $60/month? https://old.reddit.com/r/AmazonLeo/comments/1uupd3w https://old.reddit.com/r/AmazonLeo/comments/1uupd3w will they offer aviation suitable plans?
- inemesitaffia 2mo agoNo it isn't, yes they will.
- amluto 2mo agoThis stinks. On the one hand, sure, the unlimited aviation plans are targeting customers with lots of money. And they involve fancy, expensive-to-replace, FAA-approved hardware. On the other hand, it’s sort of an easy market to target as such things go, and TAM is limited. In the areas where terrestrial radio for airplanes isn’t viable (rural areas and over water), there is a very low density of Internet user and satellite constellation that can cover the whole planet will have plenty of bandwidth. Right now this is Starlink and, with MUCH lower available bandwidth and correspondingly lower pricing, Iridium. But Rocketlab is surely planning to grow Iridium and Amazon is planning to launch Leo soon. And there is still only so much aviation Internet money to go around. So I think that SpaceX trying to juice profits on a small market that is only temporarily captive is a bad sign.
- Antwan 2mo agoSo private jets can no longer offer high speed internet to their customers. That’s so sad.
- cameldrv 2mo agoNot a great move for SpaceX IMO. Things that get installed on airplanes are very expensive and people expect them to last 10+ years. If the equipment can only be used with a single service provider, and they have a track record of just doubling the price because they think they can get away with it, people are going to look for alternatives. Starlink is clearly the best right now but there are competitors. In particular, these competitors may not have the capacity to service millions of households at $100/mo, but they definitely do for private planes at $10k/mo, especially when the service is only being used for maybe 40hr/mo.
- r2sk5t 2mo agoGeneral Aviation pilots are apoplectic and circulating a petition: https://www.flyingmag.com/starlinks-pricing-shift-a-bait-and-switch-for-general-aviation/ https://www.flyingmag.com/starlinks-pricing-shift-a-bait-and...
- inemesitaffia 2mo agoThat's a different matter entirely.