Update, August 19, 2026: The December 2025 story was talks, not a signed Amazon Leo airline contract. On May 26, 2026 American said it would install Starlink on more than 500 narrow-body aircraft, starting early 2027 — CNBC. Tesery’s later note is Starlink then covering three of the U.S. “big four”. Musk’s December warning did not, by itself, award that deal.
On December 10, 2025 Bloomberg reported American Airlines was in talks with Amazon about Amazon Leo (the constellation formerly called Project Kuiper) for in-flight Wi-Fi. CEO Robert Isom said the carrier was looking at other low-Earth-orbit options besides Starlink so American would “have what our customers need.” AeroTime and SatNews repeated the interview. That is an exploratory commercial conversation. It is not a fleet-wide Leo install, and it is not SpaceX losing a signed AA contract.
That weekend SpaceX people answered on X. Starlink engineering VP Michael Nicolls posted that passengers should “only fly on airlines with good connectivity” and that there was “only one source of good connectivity at the moment,” as quoted by PCMag. Elon Musk replied:
American Airlines will lose a lot of customers if their connectivity solution fails
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 14, 2025
Key facts
- What AA said: Talks with Amazon about Leo in-flight Wi-Fi (Bloomberg, Dec. 10, 2025). No award announced that week.
- What SpaceX said: Public posts, not a formal SpaceX press release. Musk’s line is about customer loss if the chosen system fails.
- Leo’s size then: SatNews put Amazon Leo at about 150 satellites in orbit in December 2025 — early constellation, not Starlink’s thousands.
- What this is not: Proof AA had already rejected Starlink, or that Leo was already flying on American mainline jets.
Talks vs a network
United, Qatar, Hawaiian and others had already picked Starlink for cabins. Starlink’s own customer-count post that month is Tesery’s 9 million active customers note. An airline shopping a second LEO vendor is ordinary procurement. Nicolls’ “only one source” is a competitive claim, not an FCC finding.
Southwest’s later Starlink cabin deal and Lufthansa’s 850-aircraft agreement are separate contracts. Do not fold them into the December AA tweets.
FAQ
Did American sign Amazon Leo in December 2025?
No. The Bloomberg story is talks. The signed Starlink narrow-body deal came in May 2026.
Was this a SpaceX statement of record?
It was Musk and a Starlink VP posting on X. Treat it as that.
Did Musk say Leo does not work?
He said AA would lose customers if “their connectivity solution fails.” He did not publish a Leo performance test.
For travelers: in-flight Wi-Fi vendor fights do not change Tesla FSD on the ground. They do show how Starlink’s airline channel was being sold in late 2025 — as the incumbent LEO cabin product.
Featured photo: Falcon 9 lifting a Starlink stack (file photo of the constellation, not an American Airlines cabin). Image via Wikimedia Commons.
Related: AA later picked Starlink (May 2026) · Starlink 9 million customers · Southwest Starlink cabin deal · Lufthansa Group Starlink
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