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United inks deal with Starlink to provide free in-flight Wi-Fi
United Airlines will soon provide free Wi-Fi to passengers on flights after inking a deal with Starlink, the satellite constellation internet provider from Elon Musk-owned SpaceX.
The offering will set a new standard for in-flight Wi-Fi, which can often be costly and unreliable for passengers, the airline said in a statement Friday.
Starlink services will be available on United Airlines’ fleet of 1,000 aircraft, enabling customers to stream movies and television without buffering or requiring them to download content in advance. It will also let them browse the internet, upload and download files at fast speeds, and play online games.
United passengers will also be able to connect multiple mobile devices to the internet once, the companies said Friday. In the era of remote work, the service will allow United passengers to work from locations that wouldn’t typically offer connectivity.
The same technology is currently available to Hawaiian Airlines passengers on select flights. Currently, United provides paid Wi-Fi options to customers through four different providers. The service costs MileagePlus members $8, and nonmembers $10 to log on.
United will start testing the use of Starlink internet services in 2025. It’s expected to be deployed on passenger flights later that year.
“Everything you can do on the ground, you’ll soon be able to do onboard a United plane at 35,000 feet, just about anywhere in the world,” United CEO Scott Kirby said in a statement Friday. “This connectivity opens the door for an even better in-flight entertainment experience, in every seatback — more content, that’s more personalized. United’s culture of innovation is, once again, delivering big for our customers.”
Gwynne Shotwell, president and chief operating officer at SpaceX, said the partnership will “transform” flying.
“With Starlink onboard your United flight, you’ll have access to the world’s most advanced high-speed internet from gate to gate, and all the miles in between,” she said.
Starlink is enabled by low Earth orbit satellites that let it deliver low-latency internet in remote areas where cell or Wi-Fi signals aren’t typically available, like over oceans, according to the announcement.
Passengers have increasingly come to expect to be able to access the internet during flights. Nearly 80% of flight passengers connect to Wi-Fi when it’s made available to them, according to mobile satellite services provider Inmarsat.
The new deal could even let passengers take Zoom calls from the skies, once again redefining what remote work looks like.
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Barry Enderwick is eating his way through history, one sandwich at a time. Every day from his home in San Jose, California, Enderwick posts a cooking video from a recipe that time forgot. From the 1905 British book “Salads, Sandwiches and Savouries,” Enderwick prepared the New York Sandwich.
The recipe called for 24 oysters, minced and mixed with mayonnaise, seasoned with lemon juice and pepper, and spread over buttered day-old French bread.
Rescuing recipes from the dustbin of history doesn’t always lead to culinary success. Sampling his New York Sandwich, Enderwick decried it as “a textural wasteland. No, thank you.” Into the trash bin it went!
But Enderwick’s efforts have yielded his own cookbook, a collection of some of the strangest – and sometimes unexpectedly delicious – historical recipes you’ve never heard of.
Harvard Common Press
He even has a traveling stage show: “Sandwiches of History Live.”
From the condiments to the sliced bread, this former Netflix executive has become something of a sandwich celebrity. “You can put just about anything in-between two slices of bread,” he said. “And it’s portable! In general, a sandwich is pretty easy fare. And so, they just have universal appeal.”
Though the sandwich gets its name famously from the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, the earliest sandwich Enderwick has eaten dates from 200 B.C.E. China, a seared beef sandwich called Rou Jia Mo.
He declared it delicious. “Between the onions, and all those spices and the soy sauce … oh my God! Oh man, this is so good!”
While Elvis was famous for his peanut butter and banana concoction, Enderwick says there’s another celebrity who should be more famous for his sandwich: Gene Kelly, who he says had “the greatest man sandwich in the world, which was basically mashed potatoes on bread. And it was delicious.”
Whether it’s a peanut and sardine sandwich (from “Blondie’s Cook Book” from 1947), or the parmesian radish sandwich (from 1909’s “The Up-To-Date Sandwich Book”), Enderwick tries to get a taste of who we were – good or gross – one recipe at a time.
RECIPE: A sophisticated club sandwich
Blogger Barry Enderwick, of Sandwiches of History, offers “Sunday Morning” viewers a 1958 recipe for a club sandwich that, he says, shouldn’t work, but actually does, really well!
MORE: “Sunday Morning” 2024 “Food Issue” recipe index
Delicious menu suggestions from top chefs, cookbook authors, food writers, restaurateurs, and the editors of Food & Wine magazine.
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Story produced by Anthony Laudato. Editor: Chad Cardin.
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