Elon Musk Explores Installing Starlink On Commercial Aviation Planes

Elon Musk's Starlink is ready to serve broadband internet for commercial planes (photo: twitter)

JAKARTA - Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk said in a tweet on Thursday, October 14 that he was in talks with airlines about installing Starlink, a satellite-based broadband service owned by his rocket company SpaceX.

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk said in a tweet on Thursday, October 14 that he was in talks with airlines about installing Starlink, a satellite-based broadband service owned by his rocket company SpaceX.

Yes, we are talking to airlines about installing Starlink. Please let them know if you want it on your airliner.

Low latency ~half gigabit connectivity in the air!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 14, 2021

Musk, who is known for his Twitter banter, announcements, and lively interactions with followers, did not provide details about the conversation in his tweets. It was not immediately clear which airline was approached or when the installation would take place.

Shares of in-flight internet provider Gogo Inc fell to an intraday low of 5.7% before recouping some losses in afternoon trading.

Starlink, SpaceX's satellite internet unit, plans to deploy 12,000 satellites. SpaceX says the Starlink constellation will cost about $10 billion.

It is one of a growing number of companies making small satellites that also include Amazon.com's Kuiper, UK's OneWeb, venture capitalist Planet, and Raytheon Technologies Corp's Blue Canyon Technologies.

Musk currently leads companies including electric car maker Tesla Inc, rocket startup SpaceX, and Neuralink, a startup developing ultra-high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect the human brain to computers.