Starlink is a commercial decision

The conversation happening inside airline commercial teams has shifted noticeably over the past 12 months.

A year ago, most retail media discussions started with data; what first-party signals airlines owned, how loyalty information was structured, and whether audience targeting capabilities were mature enough to support advertisers properly. Increasingly, those conversations now start somewhere else entirely, the connectivity investment.

Specifically, Starlink, Amazon Leo, and low-earth orbit (LEO) connectivity providers more broadly.

What airlines are starting to realise is that next-generation inflight connectivity is no longer purely a passenger experience decision. It is becoming a commercial infrastructure decision too.

When Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian recently explained why the airline chose Amazon Leo over SpaceX's Starlink, the reasoning was telling. Cost mattered, but so did the broader commercial ecosystem Amazon potentially unlocks around retail, entertainment, and advertising integration. That is not simply a Wi-Fi procurement discussion, it is a strategic commercial decision about what kind of platform the airline may ultimately want to build on top of that connectivity layer.

The same logic is beginning to emerge across the industry. For many airlines, the realisation is arriving at the same time as the invoice.

The cost question is opening the commercial conversation

Deploying and operating LEO connectivity at scale is expensive. The retrofit costs, bandwidth requirements and operational overhead are substantial line items at a time when many airlines are already operating under pressure from fuel prices, geopolitical instability, and ongoing scrutiny around ancillary revenue growth.

Across a growing number of airline discussions, the same question keeps surfacing: can advertising revenue meaningfully offset the cost of the infrastructure itself?

In some cases, airlines are already experimenting with early versions of that model. A single advertiser sponsors connectivity access in exchange for fixed branding exposure across the inflight portal. But while those arrangements can generate incremental revenue, they are still fundamentally sponsorship models rather than retail media businesses.

The distinction here matters because the commercial ceiling for each is very different. A sponsorship arrangement usually means one advertiser, fixed placements, limited targeting and relatively manual execution. On the other hand, a retail media proposition is something broader; packaged audience products, measurable inventory, campaign reporting, programmatic delivery, and the ability to support multiple advertisers simultaneously.

One helps offset a cost line while the other starts to resemble a scalable commercial revenue stream.

"Airlines have been offsetting connectivity costs with sponsorship deals for years. That's a starting point, not a strategy. The real question is whether you're building a media business or just selling a banner on a login page," says Stuart Adamson, CEO and Founder, Platform 195.

As Stuart previously noted in Platform 195's 2026 Travel Retail Media Trends report, ‘inflight lacks proof, not opportunity — there is plenty of that. Once that gap closes, scale will follow.’ Advanced connectivity is starting to close that proof gap.

From captive environment to measurable media channel

Historically, inflight advertising has always suffered from the same underlying limitation. The audience was valuable, but the environment remained largely disconnected. Content was loaded before departure, placements were pre-scheduled, and measurement relied on post-flight recall studies conducted long after the journey had finished.

The cabin was captive, but it was not truly addressable. But this changes when passengers are connected through live portals on their own devices. Campaigns can be served dynamically, audiences segmented more intelligently, and attribution becomes considerably more viable than it has historically been.

Airline audiences are commercially attractive for reasons that go well beyond reach alone. Frequent flyers, premium travellers and loyalty members are high-value audiences that many advertisers struggle to identify consistently elsewhere. The inflight environment also creates unusually long dwell times inside authenticated environments, with first-party behavioural and purchase data attached to real customer identities rather than probabilistic signals.

Connectivity can now finally provide the infrastructure required for that audience value to become measurable and commercially actionable in ways traditional inflight advertising never fully could.

The operational challenge is usually bigger than the technology challenge

One of the more consistent patterns in airline retail media conversations is that the underlying capability often already exists inside the organisation. The connectivity rollout may be approved, the loyalty infrastructure already exists, and the passenger audience is commercially valuable. In many cases, advertiser interest is beginning to emerge but operational alignment is missing.

The Wi-Fi environment often sits with one team, loyalty data sits with another, and advertising relationships and digital product ownership exist elsewhere entirely. Individually, each function controls part of a commercially valuable proposition. Collectively, those pieces can become genuinely compelling for advertisers. But in many airlines, they still operate independently.

"The technology exists. It's a coordination problem — loyalty, digital, commercial and partnerships teams all holding a piece of the same puzzle without anyone accountable for putting it together,” says Stuart.

One question worth resolving before the first campaign goes live is how the connectivity environment is structured. An open-access model gets passengers online quickly, but the airline may not know who is onboard, what they are doing, or how to reach them again. A login-gated portal preserves that visibility but requires deliberate design decisions early in the deployment process that are much harder to retrofit later. Neither approach is wrong, but the commercial implications of each are significant and not always visible at the point the infrastructure decision is made.

Which is why the airlines making the most meaningful progress are the ones willing to operationalise incrementally; assigning clear internal ownership, starting with contained pilots and focusing on proving advertiser value before scaling. Connected aircraft do not automatically create monetisable media businesses. Advertisers still need credible audience packaging, measurable outcomes and a clear route to market.

Inflight is the springboard, not the destination

It would be a mistake to view inflight connectivity as the full retail media opportunity for airlines. The passenger onboard is only one moment within a much longer journey stretching from inspiration and discovery through booking, airport, inflight, destination and return. The airlines thinking most seriously about retail media are building connected commercial ecosystems across that entire journey.

But inflight is an important starting point. It brings high attention, authenticated audiences, valuable first-party data and increasingly measurable environments together in a way few other channels can.

The infrastructure investment also creates urgency that earlier retail media conversations lacked. Once airlines begin spending heavily on connected environments, the question of what commercial value those environments generate becomes much harder to avoid internally.

Stuart is clear on what is at stake for airlines that move slowly: "The airlines that move now will own their audience commercially. The ones that wait risk becoming inventory for someone else's platform."

For many airlines, the connectivity decision is already made or close to it. The more important question now is whether the commercial strategy evolves quickly enough around it.

Platform 195 specialises in retail media strategy, technology, and managed services for travel brands. Read more in our Runway to Retail Media eBook, Inflight and beyond: What does the airline retail media opportunity look like in 2026? or our 2026 Travel Retail Media Trends report. To discuss how we can help your airline build on its connectivity investment, get in touch with the team today.