Memo: Starlink Casts A Shadow Over Rival Connectivity Providers ...

An upstart provider of inflight connectivity to business aviation is not listed as an exhibitor at the European Business Aviation Conference and Exhibition (EBACE) taking place in Geneva May 28-30, but it will be casting a shadow over the competition from low Earth orbit.

Starlink, a division of SpaceX, is fast emerging as the office-in-the-sky choice for U.S. operators of both long-range, large-cabin business jets and King Air turboprops. The enterprise is massively helped by its parent company, which had peppered space with more than 6,000 low-Earth-orbit satellites as of May and created an electronically steered phased array antenna to connect with them.

Competing connectivity providers including Gogo Business Aviation, Satcom Direct and Viasat are developing their own electronically steered antennas to succeed bulkier mechanically steered assemblies. Gogo and partner Hughes Network Systems are readying FDX and smaller HDX flat-panel electronically steered antennas to connect with the Eutelsat OneWeb constellation of 630-plus LEO satellites positioned at 1,200 km (745 mi.) above the Earth (two times higher than Starlink’s at 550 km). In April, Gogo announced a partnership with Germany’s Atlas Air Group to develop the first European supplemental type certificates (STC) to install the HDX antenna on the Embraer Phenom 300 and Cessna CitationJets. 

Satcom Direct announced at EBACE 2024 that Austria’s Avcon Jet is the launch customer for the latest addition to its Plane Simple line of mechanically steered tail-mounted antennas—this one a flat-panel, fuselage-mounted electronically steered antennas that also will connect with the Eutelsat OneWeb constellation. Viasat has said that it is developing a flat-panel electronically steered antennas at its center of excellence in Lausanne, Switzerland, that can connect to satellites in multiple orbits, a system it demonstrated on a Cessna Citation in 2021. 

Meanwhile, Starlink-authorized installers are fitting the company’s low-profile, lightweight Aero Terminal electronically steered antennas to the fuselages of an expanding portfolio of Bombardier and Gulfstream jets, with further STCs in development for these brands and Cessna, Dassault, Embraer and Pilatus models. AeroMech/AMI, an installer based in Everett, Washington, has developed STCs to equip Beechcraft King Air 200- and 300-series turboprops with Starlink systems.

Starlink does not entertain questions from journalists, but industry sources say the company started assembling a dealer network this year. As of mid-May, it listed 21 authorized Starlink dealers, a dozen aircraft types with STCs available, and 20 models with STCs in development. Duncan Aviation, one of the authorized dealers, “is seeing a lot of demand for Starlink,” reports Justin Vena, a Duncan avionics installation sales representative. “Those of us that are selling avionics upgrades on models that have STCs available are quoting it every single day now. We’re talking to people daily and writing quotes.”

Early reviews of Starlink’s high-speed, low-latency, Ku-band service are that it works quite well. Operators say the company understates its 200+ MBps download and the 20+ MBps upload speeds, beating Ku-/Ka-band services supported by higher-flying geostationary (GEO) satellites on speed and latency. Starlink also wins on installation cost and weight when compared to current Ku-/Ka-band satcom systems.

Other providers have no plans to relinquish the field in the hypercompetitive satcom market. While Starlink has introduced a new choice for business aviation connectivity, Satcom Direct  President Chris Moore says his company can support mixed aircraft fleets with a diverse portfolio of hardware and airtime options, rather than offering just a single product. 

“We have been operating in the satcom business aviation sector for more than 25 years, which means we understand what the market, our clients and the industry need,” Moore told Aviation Week Network ShowNews. “We have purpose-built satellite connectivity services for business aviation and not repurposed products from other sectors.”

Moore did not rule out partnering with Starlink, however, to incorporate its low-Earth-orbit satellites into a multi-orbit network. “As far as integrating Starlink into our portfolio, it is something we can consider,” he said.