British Airways Pauses Starlink Rollout After Installation On Just Five Aircraft

British Airways has hit the brakes on its fleetwide Starlink Wi-Fi rollout after installing units on just five of its aircraft.

First announced in November 2025, the International Airlines Group (IAG) announced a partnership with Starlink to bring high-speed wireless internet to its range of subsidiary airlines including British Airways. In mid-March 2026, British Airways was the first UK carrier to launch the service, beating Virgin Atlantic by two months.

The original plan was to fit Starlink transceivers on its Boeing 787-8 fleet, which prior to the announcement, did not offer internet access. They would then move on to their Boeing 787-9s, followed by their Airbus A380s. However, after completing fitting works on just five Boeing 787-8s, British Airways has paused installations, with plans to restart rollout at the end of the summer travel period in October 2026.

According to a report, the issue isn’t a problem with Starlink itself, but rather BA not having enough hangar space to facilitate transceiver installations. The airline is focused on keeping as many of its aircraft in the air during the busy summer period, and maintenance space is being prioritized to keep their aircraft operational. As the ole saying goes, an airplane on the ground makes no money.

To add to this problem, BA is also dealing with a shortage of qualified engineers. Following the pandemic, the carrier lost dozens of experienced technicians, and has since been on a race to try to rehire the necessary talent.

In a statement to Simple Flying and other media, British Airways said:

“We’re proud to be rolling out Starlink Wi-Fi across our fleet and remain on track to complete installation as planned. To avoid cancelling flights and disrupting customers, we have a planned installation programme that aligns Starlink embodiment with scheduled maintenance.”

The carrier originally planned to install Starlink across its fleet of 300+ planes by March 2028, but their turnaround rate has been much slower in reality, closer to one aircraft every 12 days.

Credit: British Airways

With four months taken out of the equation, BA is most likely on track to outfit just 60 planes by their March 2028 deadline based on its previous install rate. If they do take a page out of Qatar’s books and find a way to increase turnaround time, then we might see more planes in the sky offering high speed internet going into 2027 and 2028. The carrier is still promising to meet its original target, so it will be interesting to see how they pull that off.  

This news comes as a bit of a surprise, and I can’t help but wonder why the management team at British Airways went out of its way to promise something that they clearly cannot deliver as expected. Did they do it simply to say they were the first in the UK to launch Starlink? Or were they blindsided by summer demand and issues in its hangars?

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