United Airlines is trying to pry away its rivals’ loyal fliers with a not-so-subtle jab at their lack of Starlink.
“Don’t keep buffering: switch to United and get the fastest WiFi in the sky,” reads its offer to match travelers’ loyalty status on Delta Air Lines or American Airlines.
Early on Thursday, United’s X account replied to a dozen posts from users who were discussing the offer or complaining about Delta’s in-flight WiFi.
The offer is open until October 15, and customers will have 90 days to spend or fly with United to maintain their status level through the end of January 2028. It applies to members with elite status, which starts with American Gold or Delta Silver Medallion.
United was the first US airline to announce a deal with Elon Musk’s Starlink, back in 2024. As of mid-September, Starlink was equipped on about a third of its fleet, including mainline aircraft and regional ones operated by United Express subsidiaries.
It hopes that all its airplanes will be equipped with the ultra-fast satellite WiFi service by the end of next year.
Although American signed on with Starlink in May, the service is not yet available as the airline plans to start rolling it out next year on narrow-body airplanes.
American also announced a loyalty-status match program late on Wednesday. It’s offered to travelers with status on Southwest, JetBlue, Delta, and United, and lasts for four months.
However, switching your airline of choice may not be practical for everyone.
While the Big Three airlines compete fiercely in major cities, many travelers may find one of them offers more routes — or perhaps the only ones — from their local airport. For example, Delta has a larger presence in the South thanks to its enormous hub in Atlanta.
Unlike its rivals, Delta has passed on Starlink in favor of Amazon Leo. Leo similarly uses a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit for internet connection, but its only other airline customer is JetBlue. Delta plans to start installing the service on 500 aircraft in 2028.
Delta’s decision has repeatedly drawn Musk’s ire.
On Tuesday, he posted on X saying Delta CEO Ed Bastian will “lose his job over this.” The world’s richest person also responded with a laughing emoji to one user who joked that AI agents could be isolated from crawling the internet by giving them Delta’s in-flight WiFi.
It was at least the third instance of Musk bashing Delta since it announced the Amazon Leo deal in May.
At the time, Bastian told Bloomberg that Amazon’s service has an “improved bandwidth with a much lower price point than what we’ve ever seen from Starlink.”
He also highlighted Amazon’s retail and video-gaming offerings, and an airline spokesperson cited the potential for a “broader partnership” beyond in-flight WiFi.
Delta and United did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
