Henry Innes, an Australian software firm founder, has had it with Qantas. After one too many trips missing valuable communication time when flying long-haul on the national carrier, which does not have Wi-Fi on all its international flights, Innes has begun booking with other carriers.
“It becomes very difficult as a business person to operate on our national carrier if you’re spending heaps of time offline and you’re unable to respond to [messages on Microsoft] Teams,” Innes said.
International carriers such as United, Qatar Airways, and Hawaiian Airlines are streaking ahead, setting a high bar for in-flight connectivity by adopting Elon Musk’s Starlink on their flights.
But there’s a cost that Qantas fliers should be aware of before calling for the airline to start working with the centibillionaire.
As in other cases, Musk, while championing his technology, has proven relentless with his detractors. Most recently, the billionaire has landed in a public feud with the CEO of Irish low-cost carrier Ryanair.
Musk was incensed after Michael O’Leary, himself no introvert, told Irish radio Ryanair would not add Wi-Fi to the airline’s fleet of 650 planes because the drag created by the antennas would translate to higher fuel cost.
When Musk caught wind of this he posted “Ryanair CEO is an utter idiot. Fire him.” Musk has asked his 232 million followers if he should buy the airline.
Given Musk’s clashes with EU regulators over matters such as social media, it’s hard to imagine them signing off on his purchase of a company like an airline in a highly regulated industry.
Even so, the Ryanair CEO has skilfully turned their recent insults and public stoush into a promotional fare sale for “idiots”.
In making the announcement, O’Leary wrote: “Musk knows even less about airline ownership rules than he does about aircraft aerodynamics.”
For Musk, whose rocket company SpaceX has revolutionised space cargo, those words must hurt. (Musk apparently was peeved enough about US president Joe Biden’s snub of Tesla’s electric cars that he began backing Donald Trump in 2024.)
For all his public brawling, the South African-born billionaire’s technology, including at Tesla and X, has had a huge impact on the world.
Even so, Musk seems increasingly unable to draw a line between genuine technological disruption and the political chaos he has aided on Earth.
It is possible that this Musk-engineered political chaos will one day even reach Mars. The Starlink terms and conditions require users to agree to reject Earth-bound human governance of the red planet, reflecting Musk’s personal crusade to colonise in the planet on his terms.
One wonders if the 280,000 terrestrial subscribers to Starlink in Australia truly realise what they are signing on to. One wonders if any of us do with Starlink on long-haul flights.
None of this is to say that the technology behind Starlink, which receives internet signal from 9300 (and counting) small satellites in low Earth orbit, which allows a faster connection and fewer outages, isn’t valid or even inspired.
For Wi-Fi service, Qantas uses Viasat, which relies on signals from a small network of powerful satellites to ground stations and back. As the airline pushes ahead with along anticipated fleet refresh, it’s beginning to add Wi-Fi to international flights and the service is a feature of newer planes in the fleet.
Superfast internet connections in air travel will undoubtedly change the world. It is important to check, now and again, in which way it will change.
To a degree, we’re fulfilling Musk’s vision.
Airlines are racing to put faster, more abundant Wi-Fi in cabins even as on the ground we’re trying to impose limits on screen time for young people, and we’re asking how compatible social media is with democracy and our mental health.
Limited Wi-Fi on planes isn’t just an inconvenience; it may also preserve some quarter of our public life from an endless digital onslaught and what travel writer Richard Tams calls the “mirage of productivity at 35,000 feet”.
“The great productivity paradox of a long-haul flight is that, by failing to work, we actually rest enough to think clearly again,” he recently wrote.
We are witnessing a profound paradox: even as Musk’s Starlink weaves us more tightly into the network, the human necessity for occasional “digital detox” has never been more urgent.
Perhaps one day, the ultimate luxury offering on planes won’t be unlimited Wi-Fi, but cabins free of it entirely. Musk would not be happy.
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