Qatar Airways (QA) now operates 150 widebody aircraft fitted with Starlink satellite Internet and has become the first airline in the world to fly the Boeing 787-9 with the service installed, the carrier announced yesterday.
The world-first follows completion of the Starlink retrofit across the airline’s entire Boeing 787-8 sub-fleet in seven months. Work has now moved to the 787-9, the stretched variant of the Dreamliner.
The 150 aircraft represent the cumulative total of three retrofit programmes carried out during scheduled maintenance, each completed faster than the last. The Boeing 777 fleet was fitted in nine months and the Airbus A350 fleet in eight, before the seven-month 787-8 programme.
QA said it now operates the world’s first and largest Starlink-equipped Boeing 777, Airbus A350 and Boeing 787 fleets. Up to 323 Starlink-enabled flights depart daily, the carrier said, making high-speed onboard connectivity a routine feature across its network rather than a service confined to selected routes.Since the service launched onboard in October 2024, more than 23mn passengers have connected across over 86,000 QA flights.
The programme, which the airline describes as the fastest and most ambitious Starlink widebody installation in aviation history, has passed 83% completion, leaving roughly one aircraft in six still to be fitted.