Until this week, to find out whether your United flight had Starlink Wi-Fi, you needed to know the plane’s registration number. SeatWifi—a volunteer-fed database—lists 371 United tail numbers confirmed to carry the equipment, assembled from passenger reports, FAA records, and aviation databases.
Another option, StarlinkFlights—which has collected more than 155,000 flight observations since February—also offers the probability a flight will offer Starlink Wi-Fi compared against the share of the fleet it believes is fitted. When the platform has no confirmed aircraft type for a route, it falls back to the fleet-wide average, so the probability arrives as a percentage.
But using either platform required you to first work out which airplane was actually operating your flight, meaning you can only cross-reference against a flight tracker a day or so before departure.
On October 15, United launched its own Starlink Tracker, which takes a flight number within three days of departure and says whether the aircraft assigned to it has Starlink Wi-Fi, updating should the assigned aircraft change. United says the tool was built in response to customer demand, and that demand is easy to see, considering the trackers that have launched since the first Starlink-equipped E-175 entered service last year.
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As helpful as these trackers have been, United was always going to be the only party that could answer properly.
A list that travelers kept by hand
United’s dashboard says 640 aircraft have Starlink installed. SeatWifi only shows 371 United planes, while StarlinkFlights puts United at 724 of a 1,787-aircraft fleet. Across every carrier the latter covers, it has independently verified 171 of the 1,679 Starlink aircraft reported on the site. Meanwhile, United obviously has the exact data about the aircraft in its fleet with Starlink.
Both sites are built with care by people who cannot see the same data that airlines can, but have such a vested interest that any information is better than none. It goes to show how popular Starlink Wi-Fi is on flights. But mistakes in the data can accumulate. SeatWifi’s tail database includes entries that are flight numbers rather than registrations.