Hawaiian adds free Starlink WiFi to Sydney-Honolulu flights

Hawaiian Airlines is now serving up fast free WiFi on flights between Sydney and Honolulu – and when we say fast, we mean it.

Powered by the innovative Starlink satellite network developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, passengers are reporting download speeds averaging a whopping 150Mbps (uploads are a none-too-shabby 20Mbps), matched with a highly reliable connection from start to finish.

With thousands of ‘micro-satellites’ hovering in low Earth orbit, the Starlink constellation also offers low latency of around 50ms which can even make modest online gaming possible.

“I’m not a big gamer, but I’ve played first-person shooter games on the plane,” Avi Mannis, Hawaiian Airlines’ Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, told Executive Traveller earlier this year. “One of the real advantages of these low Earth orbit satellites is the latency.”

“And it’s certainly suitable for streaming, the whole aircraft can be streaming and nobody’s going to see lag.”

Hawaiian’s passengers can tap into free Starlink WiFi on all 24 of the workhorse Airbus A330 jets which ply trans-Pacific routes, including those spearing into the US mainland – along with the entire shorter-range A321neo fleet.

The Internet connection is available on a ‘gate-to-gate’ basis, just like inflight entertainment.

Up next are Hawaiian’s flagship Boeing 787s. Mannis says the airline’s third Dreamliner will arrive later this year, with “a couple more coming next year and a couple more the year after” until all 12 are delivered, although the airline has not revealed when the 787s will get their Starlink upgrade.

The first 787 will take a bit longer to be certified – “and because we’re the first airline to be deploying Starlink, we get to go through the certification process first” – but then it’s a pretty quick installation as these things go, it’s just a couple of days to do.”

As previously reported, Hawaiian Airlines is also a step closer to joining the Oneworld alliance following approval by US regulators for a US$1.9bn buyout by Alaska Airlines.

The merger of the Seattle- and Honolulu-based carriers will result in what Alaska describes as “a single operation with two public-facing brands, Hawaiian Airlines and Alaska Airlines,” each operating from their respective hub.

“I think (Alaska) have said that when we are all one airline that the Hawaiian Airlines brand – which will be a brand underneath the operating platform of Alaska Airlines – will be a part of Oneworld,” Mannis told Executive Traveller.

“And at some point then from an alliance perspective, we'll look at Oneworld. But none of that's going to happen overnight.”

Oman Air will join Oneworld towards the end of year, with Fiji Airways joining Oneworld in 2025 (and also adopting the AAdvantage program of American Airlines as its loyalty scheme), which indicates Hawaiian Airlines might join Oneworld in 2026, allowing time for Hawaiian’s back-end to move to the same Oneworld-compliant platform of Alaska Airlines.