Two months ago American Airlines was still weighing Starlink against Amazon's competing service, and on Tuesday it picked Starlink for more than 500 planes. SpaceX is about a month away from going public, so the timing isn't an accident.
American's stock jumped about 7% on the news.
American said Starlink will go on roughly 500 of its narrow-body Airbus jets, including A321neos, with installations starting early next year. The airline's Boeing fleet keeps its current mix of Viasat and Panasonic for now.
The deal pushes SpaceX even further ahead in the airline race. United, Southwest, and Alaska (which merged with Hawaiian in 2024) have all chosen Starlink.
Delta went the other way in March, picking Amazon's Leo satellites for hundreds of jets starting in 2028. The whole airline industry is upgrading internet at the same time - slow, clunky Wi-Fi turned into a competitive weapon.
American flipped on free Wi-Fi for AAdvantage members in January, following United, Delta, and others.
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SpaceX's connectivity business - the unit that includes Starlink - brought in $11.39 billion last year. That was 61% of all SpaceX revenue, per the company's IPO filing earlier this month.
The SpaceX IPO investors are about to size up is mostly a Starlink story, which means every airline logo SpaceX can stack into the pitch helps. American just added one of the biggest.
The next thing investors will watch is the SpaceX IPO itself and how much of its valuation Wall Street actually attaches to Starlink versus the rockets. Then comes the slower question of whether in-flight Wi-Fi shifts which airlines higher-spending fliers actually pick.
American picked its side three weeks before the most-anticipated IPO in years.
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