Delta strikes Amazon partnership for airplane Wi-Fi. Here’s what we know.
Delta Air Lines plans to bring faster Wi-Fi to more than a third of its fleet through a partnership with Amazon’s low Earth orbit satellite communications network, Amazon Leo, starting in 2028.
The technology will roll out on about 500 Delta aircraft and promises to empower passengers to upload photos and videos, stream on multiple devices at once and even access graphics-intensive multiplayer gaming, said Ranjan Goswami, the airline’s incoming chief marketing and product officer.
Amazon Leo could enable at least three times the bandwidth capability and is about continuing to meet ever-growing customer expectations, he said in an interview.
“How do we keep shoring up for the future?” he asked. “People want to do more. … I see this as the next horizon.”
It also, he said, will unlock the ability for customers to ultimately stream personalized content directly to their seat back screen directly.
The first part of that “two-step journey,” he said, is the company’s Delta Sync logged-in experience, currently rolled out on almost 400 airplanes.
“And then tomorrow with Leo and next generation (in-flight entertainment) systems, streaming to that seat will be possible,” Goswami said.
Amazon Leo, formerly known as Project Kuiper, sent its first satellites into space about a year ago and plans for a network of about 3,000.
But SpaceX’s Starlink has nearly 8,000 satellites in space and several airline partnerships well underway. United Airlines and Alaska Airlines both have promised to have Starlink technology installed across their entire fleets by next year.
JetBlue, meanwhile, was the first to announce a partnership with Amazon Leo last fall.
Goswami argued the Atlanta-based airline remains well ahead of competitors when it comes to Wi-Fi.
“We have literally 1,200 airplanes with free Wi-Fi today. No one else is anywhere close to that kind of a number and certainly hasn’t been there for as long a period of time that we have,” he said.
Delta has already installed free Wi-Fi capability through ongoing partnerships with Viasat and Hughes satellite companies, and the airline will continue to have a “multipartner ecosystem,” he noted. The new Leo technology will also be free to SkyMiles loyalty members.
“It’s not a change. It’s not a surprise. It’s part of the arc. And when you have a fleet of 1,400 airplanes you’ve got to always keep planning for the future,” Goswami said.
When asked about the Starlink comparison, Goswami said, “We have really stringent and high service level agreements today, and that’s going to continue with Amazon. The consistency of an awesome experience on Delta is going to be, I believe, more consistent than anywhere else.”
The airline and Amazon already have a yearslong relationship; Amazon Web Services is Delta’s preferred cloud provider.
In a statement announcing the news, Delta CEO Ed Bastian said the company’s “future is global.”
The Amazon agreement “gives us the fastest and most cost-effective technology available to better connect the world today, and it deepens our work with a global leader that shares our ambition to build what’s next — creating even stronger human connection for our people and our customers for years to come.”
But Amazon’s constellation for North America will be ready before its global satellite network, Goswami said, so Delta will focus the early Amazon Leo rollout on its domestic fleet first.
The airline plans to put as much of it on the new Boeing 737 Max-10 narrow-body aircraft it expects to begin receiving in 2027.
About the Author
As a business reporter, Emma Hurt leads coverage of the Atlanta airport, Delta Air Lines, UPS, Norfolk Southern and other travel and logistics companies. Prior to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution she worked as an editor and Atlanta reporter for Axios, a politics reporter for WABE News and a business reporter for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
