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Starlink changes In-motion speed limits
- Thread starter pazmanyflyer
- Start date
NORDO Industries LLC
Well Known Member
Word on the street today is that this also applies to even the $5/mo Standby plan.
My initial guess is that there's been enough war shenanigans involving Starlink terminals that they've gone this route, especially given that they now require identity verification.
I've opened a support ticket with them to go "hey uhhh this is a safety thing for me – I'm happy for you to verify my identity and tail number, but I'm not willing to pay $250/mo for service at 150 mph". They've relented/adjusted their plans in the past when there's been enough customer outrage – go speak up as to how this would affect you, and that just because you're flying at >100mph doesn't mean you're a bizjet.
My initial guess is that there's been enough war shenanigans involving Starlink terminals that they've gone this route, especially given that they now require identity verification.
I've opened a support ticket with them to go "hey uhhh this is a safety thing for me – I'm happy for you to verify my identity and tail number, but I'm not willing to pay $250/mo for service at 150 mph". They've relented/adjusted their plans in the past when there's been enough customer outrage – go speak up as to how this would affect you, and that just because you're flying at >100mph doesn't mean you're a bizjet.
...and 20Gb data?
MVB
Member
https://starlink.com/support/article/50e933eb-54f5-1a77-cc85-c6c8325564cf
Yes, seems they should have reduced the speed limit from 100 mph to 200 mph and below. Small general aviation is significantly more price-sensitive (than turbine/jet), and it’s not used daily (most of the time). Instead, they now have recapped speed in motion down to 100 mph, and you can purchase an “Aviation plan” with either 300 mph or 450 mph speed limits and 20 GB data caps. No way I can justify paying that for casual / intermittent use. I will be turning my off now.
I believe in the free market, so if they can get it, good for them and they should maximize their profit, but I think they have miscalculated the demand / price elasticity curve here.
Yes, seems they should have reduced the speed limit from 100 mph to 200 mph and below. Small general aviation is significantly more price-sensitive (than turbine/jet), and it’s not used daily (most of the time). Instead, they now have recapped speed in motion down to 100 mph, and you can purchase an “Aviation plan” with either 300 mph or 450 mph speed limits and 20 GB data caps. No way I can justify paying that for casual / intermittent use. I will be turning my off now.
I believe in the free market, so if they can get it, good for them and they should maximize their profit, but I think they have miscalculated the demand / price elasticity curve here.
Seems like they go back and forth with this a fair bit. I don’t have one and can’t really justify it anyway, but even if I could, I’d want some sort of commitment on their part that they won’t pull the rug on me a few days/months after I commit to buying and installing their equipment.
Coming from the corporate jet world, I definitely understand the benefits of essentially full service internet. I do find it hard to rationalize high bandwidth in our amateur homebuilt aircraft. There are other options that I think are much better suited for our small planes.
An iPad for the spouse can be loaded with Netflix, Apple TV, Amazon Prime content that can be played in flight without internet, and T mobile offers SpaceX satellite service for 10 dollars a month that supports a growing list of apps and doesn’t require all the bulky hardware. So I’m pretty much covered for a fraction of the cost of starlink. Other than service limited to a single smartphone, ( tethering is not supported ), I can’t think of any other benefits that Starlink offers me.
An iPad for the spouse can be loaded with Netflix, Apple TV, Amazon Prime content that can be played in flight without internet, and T mobile offers SpaceX satellite service for 10 dollars a month that supports a growing list of apps and doesn’t require all the bulky hardware. So I’m pretty much covered for a fraction of the cost of starlink. Other than service limited to a single smartphone, ( tethering is not supported ), I can’t think of any other benefits that Starlink offers me.
We all need to call the support number and ask for a refund on the equipment
NORDO Industries LLC
Well Known Member
I’ve personally used the service for finding a better diversion airport based on FAA webcams, weather radar that’s only 90 seconds old instead of 15 minutes, contacting FBOs ahead of diverting, having a phone number provided to me by ATC as I’m going through a dead spot so I can call them if I need help.
My feeling is that Something Happened the last few days and an email went out late at night that said “fix this immediately” (I don’t want to speculate as to what the triggering event was, because things are very… complex… in the world right now). It’s springtime in the Northern Hemisphere soon, and we have all got trips coming up and this definitely feels Not Cool.
Starlink won't be the only game in town for much longer, competition is on the way.
https://broadbandbreakfast.com/amazon-project-kuiper-to-begin-u-s-service-within-about-six-months/
https://spacenews.com/ast-spacemobile-gains-verizon-ally-amid-spacexs-direct-to-device-push/
Granted there's a lot of marketing hype for investors, but the mobile broadband/direct-to-device market is too big to ignore.
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Spot on, Dave. If I list everything I'd want from inflight connectivity - weather, voice calls, texting, maybe music - 50-150 mb/sec is overkill. I'll be happy when I can get a fraction of that from my cell phone. Not saying lots of data isn't nice, just that it's not worth the cost for my use case.
On the other hand, with ADS-B Out, GPS, synthetic vision, terrain avoidance, a coupled autopilot and lots of bandwidth, who needs to look outside? I can outsource my PIC responsibilities to an AI pilot on the ground and then watch YouTube videos when I'm in the air.
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Ironically I was discussing getting a mini starlink system lasyt week with the CFO. Mentioned that she could use it on our rare crosscountry flights and it would be a nice safety feature to see weather quicker than my Merlin unit. The cost was the deciding factor since I would not be using it much. After this announcement. I am no longer considering getting one. Aviation might be my passion, but as with most of us, we are on a limited budget and give up other pursuits to enjoy flying.
I was all set up to install it on my -14. Got the last of the components yesterday after the announcement. I too bad I'll be missing out on:
I've been flying without it for many, many, years.....so I guess I'm only losing what I've invested in the equipment. Still, it looked like a nice addition for my type of flying. <heavy sigh>.
- The ability to have my Uber arrive at just the right time at my destination
- The ability to contact ATC in the event of a comm problem
- The ability to contact those waiting for me at my destination to update them if I'm running late
- The ability to communicate by phone should I need to land at an airport where I have no cell service after hours.
- The ability to make a hotel reservation in the event of an unplanned stop
- The ability to order food for a mid trip stop at those nice little airports with a restaurant reducing trip time.
I've been flying without it for many, many, years.....so I guess I'm only losing what I've invested in the equipment. Still, it looked like a nice addition for my type of flying. <heavy sigh>.
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I don't believe this is game playing as much as it is a new to the world offering and they need to figure out just who their customer is and the size of the market.
As an innovation/new product development professional this is one of the tasks I need to establish prior to pro forma capital expenditure requests. However my clients are not personal billionaires chasing dreams; they are responsible to a board of directors and investors expecting returns.
They have a HUGE market with the airlines coming online. A couple months ago the "Spacex" engineering team came to my day job and we worked to do a survey on a Boeing 777 we had all opened up for the hardware upfit. We mocked the whole thing up with the Home Depot version. The system is super simple vs the rotating antenna array and internal wiring currently on most airliners. It literally serves the whole cabin with a simple repeater wirelessly. They are fast track upfitting the airlines (STC's) with the "high speed" service, and it is not cheap. Reading between the lines of explanation, the slower speed group (cars) and the fast jets are the money makers. I'm not tech savvy, but have to think our market isn't worth supporting.
Amazon LEO is waaaaay behind Starlink but their service should be up and running with "decent" coverage in a couple years. This all assumes the FCC grants Amazon an extension for their license because as it's currently written, Amazon has to have 50% of their allotted satellites in orbit by this summer. It will take a couple more years to get to 50%. Amazon currently has ~200 satellites in orbit. Starlink has 10,000.
What will be really interesting is when SpaceX gets wider adoption of their DTC (Direct To Cell) satellite service for our phones. That service could potentially provide very strong competition for the big cell carriers. I'm not sure how or if that will work in the air because of the speeds but if it does work, that might replace the need for Starlink in the cabin.
What will be really interesting is when SpaceX gets wider adoption of their DTC (Direct To Cell) satellite service for our phones. That service could potentially provide very strong competition for the big cell carriers. I'm not sure how or if that will work in the air because of the speeds but if it does work, that might replace the need for Starlink in the cabin.
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maybe Apple will say it support GPS speed greater than 100mph if you pay a monthly fee
They'd loose tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of customers. Every airline is nearly, or completely paperless now. Charts, flight plans, weather, W&B, and usually even logbooks. Every airliner has at least 3 iPads running all the fancy airline apps, all wanting geo-referenced charts and maps. There's no way Apple is giving up this market.
They're not Apple's apps, so it doesn't make Apple an aviation business. But Apple does support the aviation industry by supporting the apps.
As a percentage of Apple's revenue, that market probably rounds to zero. But I hope airlines are not actually using iPad GPS functions in flight, and that's what I suspect they would disable.
Apple provides the hardware and software for the location function. It is not designed for aviation - it doesn't have the reliability or integrity checking. If they e.g. degraded position to 10 miles precision and updated every 60 seconds above 100mph, it would be fine for your average consumer looking out the window, but not usable for precision navigation that should use an aviation GPS.
It's used for situational awareness. Not navigating. Yes, they are absolutely used in flight.
ForeFlight or FlightPlan Go shows a little airplane symbol on a map or chart? Same thing, just with the airline's preferred apps.
Considering that most EFBs are iPads, I'd hope that they're smarter than ElonLink...er, I mean Starlink!
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There’s no GPS hardware on the iPad I use for ForeFlight. I suppose Apple could figure out how to disable my iPad’s use of WiFi GPS data above 100 mph, but… why.
There are just some who are deeply embedded in all things Microsoft (or DOS if they are of a certain age) and still have their fingers crossed that Apple will fail.
Which based on the wild drift in this thread, those same people believe that Apple operates a GPS sat constellation that provides positioning service. Weird. The entire analogy fails, but has taken over the subject. Hopefully things get halfway back on the rails, like comments from people who think that since they don't have a need for it nobody else should want it either.
I have had Starlink since the mini was released, more for use in the hangar or as a backup than while flying but I did look forward to that when the time came. One thing that has been consistent, is changes to the plans. They seem to have some new big idea every few months, with the terms generally getting better as they go. I have a feeling this is a speed bump and within a few months we'll see the value come back.
Meanwhile, I'm going to keep an eye out for Sporty's (and others) to put those mount/accessory/battery bundles on sale now while the interest is down.
I also have a mini that has worked wonderfully the past few months. Today I got my first “your going to fast” message.
To get their attention we ALL need to write to them to let them know we would like them to raise the speed limit to at least 200MPH. We do not fly often enough to justify $250 for the 10 hours/month that we fly.
I have already started a ticket complaining about the Roaming plan change.
To get their attention we ALL need to write to them to let them know we would like them to raise the speed limit to at least 200MPH. We do not fly often enough to justify $250 for the 10 hours/month that we fly.
I have already started a ticket complaining about the Roaming plan change.
Not sure, but I think it’s illegal to sell GPS receivers that work over 800 knots.
My RV-9A goes that fast, but it takes six flights…
My RV-9A goes that fast, but it takes six flights…
Somewhere there's a guy flying around who mined his own boxite to build his RV, with no com, no gps, no adsb, paper chart following arrows and he's laughing his tail off.
Yup, Ken Scott is still around!
(...who once said to me: "Why would you want one of those GPS things when paper sectionals are just fine?")
Commercial GPS units are required to stop operating if above 1000 knots and above 59,000 feet. The requirement is an "and", although some devices on the market will stop working if only one of those is exceeded, which is a hassle for high-powered model rocket enthusiasts.
Prescott Flyer
Active Member
What a great opportunity for Sirius XM to woo folks back with a lowered rate for their weather products! Wink wink, nudge nudge!
More likely I'll bet they had been considering lowering it to keep customers, and now they don't need to.
Please do let us know what happens. For my planned usage, that would be plenty of bandwidth.
Starlink GENERAL AVIATION FEEDBACK Form, allegedly from a Mooney forum:
docs.google.com
Starlink General Aviation Feedback
Please fill out this form to help quantify the effect of the recent pricing changes for GA Starlink access
docs.google.com
Technology is an obsession! While gps, xm and ads-b are great, I personally don’t want internet in my GA aircraft. I love flying with the phone OFF, listening to the engine drone while enjoying the world going by outside.
What are the benefits of starlink?
We can already see metars, TAF, WX, airport info, etc. on what we currently use. Are you guys droning along and surfing the web and sending emails?
Disconnect and enjoy the beauty of our world!
What are the benefits of starlink?
We can already see metars, TAF, WX, airport info, etc. on what we currently use. Are you guys droning along and surfing the web and sending emails?
Disconnect and enjoy the beauty of our world!
Here's a Change.org petition - I signed it - probably won't do any good but there are already 5000 signatures.
Here's a Change.org petition - I signed it - probably won't do any good but there are already 5000 signatures.
I hope this doesn't backfire. I would not expect that Starlink wants anything to do with providing a service that pilots have decided has a critical safety role. They don't want that implied liability without the appropriate protections and an upcharge.
Passengers and family enjoy it (music, etc.) and for 5 bucks a month highly worth it.
So I just got back from flying. I got the speed warning while on standby mode. Bummer
True in the US, but not in most of the rest of the world. There are products out there like Safesky that show traffic information if you are connected to the Internet. Most of the world does not mandate ADS-B out, so getting traffic from either ground radar or other systems aggregated onto your ipad is nice. Also, getting weather updates on a long cross country is really hard without an Internet connection. Eventually this will get solved as more competitors enter the market, but it will take a few more years.
After you get the warning, does it stop transmitting data?
Never transmitted any data at all. Just got the warning.
I recently installed Starlink and it was awesome having connectivity for a total of one flight before they changed their terms. Sent a support ticket requesting a modification or waiver but no go. They did offer a free month of the aviation 300mph plan but required a copy of my passport, tail number and ICAO code. Asked if I could provide something other than a passport and they said no. Oh well, was nice while it lasted.
What the brilliant minds at Starlink fail to realize is that, other than the occasional use while on cross country flights, 99% of GA pilots wouldn't even consider being a Starlink customer. That means 99% of the units not being sold. It also means 99% of the accounts would be closed or never be opened.
Just emphasizes that we humans can be extremely gifted on one topic yet be totally ignorant on another.
I have set up my phone as a mobile hotspot. Then every device that I want can connect to my phone and get data. There are some dead zones, but they aren't terribly big.
If it works reasonably well in Northern Ontario, following roads, I'm sure it will work even better in more densely populated areas.
Not Picking on Reflex and bummer this happened but it has happened to others after they installed it and I can may be comfort your concerns about doing all those things you list, albeit not as slick as Star Link:
YouTube channel Canard Boulevard, Scott is content creator and it's a great channel, talks about this Star Link policy change:
Scott also did video on Garmin Pilot and Garmin Inreach Mini policy change, and talks about T-mobles satellite based texting. May be an option?
Star Link cost BILLIONS to put that system in the sky and billions to keep it up. Commercial systems on jets cost more than your house. Star Link once a bargain for in-flight broad band higher speed internet, now costs what it is worth. It will work on RV's and boats (that go out into open ocean far from land).
There are so many alternatives for GA pilot flying over USA. Unless you are going out over open ocean or far away remote land you don't "need" high speed wide bandwidth satellite data. For emergencies besides a PLB, there are SOS devices you can buy and pay a modest fee for if really exploring remote corners of the world. There are Sat phones as well.
All the things listed above can easily be done with a cell phone, COM Radio or ADS-B In.
- ADS-B In or Sirius XM - Weather NEXRAD WX via ADS-B in or Sirius XM subscription. Remember Flt Service Stations (FSS)? Yep.
- Cell phone works airborne. - ATC Emergency for say NORDO, yep call the nearest ATC phone number. Know how to look up ATC phone numbers.
- Cell phone T-Mobile providers has Satellite text available in their cell phones
- Cell phone text people an update of your new ETA.
- Cell phone never tried to use my Uber App airborne...
- VHF Com Weather, FSS or ATC.
- VHF Com call an FBO enroute on Multi Com or CTAF and ask if they would call/text a number with new ETA.
- VHF Com in range of Destination call FBO, to call hotel for shuttle.
Never had Star Link, much less in an airplane. Did have SAT based data at airlines for position reports, company messages, weather. It was utilitarian no "internet" surfing. That is how I would use Star Link. It would being advantageous, real-time weather and operational data, as well as passenger connectivity (send receive email from family). You could also stream videos, movies for entertainment. Not sure that is a good idea for the PIC but passengers would like it.
Bottom Line if you are going out over oceans or remote corners of the world buy stand alone device/service like Sat Phone, SOS and for sure have a PLB. Many for fee commercial SOS location devices have limited text message abilities, may be some not so limited? Personally I like not being connected in flight, just as long as I have info I need for a safe flight and VHF COM, ADS-B In and Cell phone is good enough.
