Delta Air Lines and Amazon have signed a long-term agreement to bring high-speed satellite internet to hundreds of Delta aircraft, marking one of the most significant upgrades to in-flight connectivity in the aviation industry’s recent history.
Announced on March 31, 2026, the deal gives Amazon’s satellite internet venture, Amazon Leo, one of its highest-profile customers yet, as it races to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink, which already has agreements in place with United, Southwest, and Alaska Airlines.
The rollout will begin in 2028, with Amazon Leo’s in-flight internet initially covering 500 Delta aircraft. The service will be free for all Delta SkyMiles members as part of their existing membership packages.
Amazon Leo operates through a constellation of satellites positioned in low Earth orbit (LEO), roughly 370 miles above the planet’s surface. This puts its satellites more than 50 times closer to Earth than the traditional geostationary systems that have powered legacy in-flight Wi-Fi, dramatically reducing latency for passengers.
The Leo Ultra antenna, an aviation-grade phased array unit, will be installed on Delta’s aircraft and is designed to support download speeds of up to 1 Gbps and upload speeds of up to 400 Mbps, enabling passengers to stream video, join video calls, and upload large files mid-flight.
“Delta’s future is global,” said Ed Bastian, Delta’s chief executive officer. “This agreement gives us the fastest and most cost-effective technology available to better connect the world today.”
Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy described the deal as a demonstration of Leo’s scale and ambition, noting that the network was designed to serve billions of people currently without reliable internet access.
The partnership builds on an existing relationship between Delta and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Since 2020, Delta has migrated hundreds of applications to the cloud using AWS, which powers the airline’s reservation systems, operational tools, and customer-facing platforms.
Delta will initially focus the Leo rollout on domestic-focused narrow-body aircraft from Boeing and Airbus, while continuing to work with existing connectivity partners Viasat and Hughes Network Systems for other parts of its fleet.
Amazon currently has around 200 satellites in orbit, compared to more than 10,000 for Starlink, which launched commercial service in late 2020 and now counts more than 10 million subscribers globally. Amazon has more than 20 full-scale satellite launch missions planned over the next year as it works to build out a constellation of approximately 3,200 LEO satellites.
Beyond connectivity, the agreement is expected to deepen the integration of Amazon technologies across the entire Delta travel experience, with the two companies planning to use artificial intelligence (AI) and AWS cloud infrastructure to personalise services at every stage of a passenger’s journey.
