"We Do Not Want to Be With Elon Musk," Delta's CEO Reportedly Told Employees

Since March, Delta Air Lines has given the public one explanation for why its planes will not carry Starlink. In Delta's telling, Amazon's competing satellite network was cheaper, came with Prime, gaming, and retail tie-ins, and fit beside the Amazon cloud services the airline already runs on.

Ed Bastian, Delta's chief executive, made that case to Bloomberg in May.

On Tuesday, notes from a Delta company event surfaced on X with a different reason. According to the notes, Bastian told employees, "We do not want to be with Elon Musk. Trust me." JonNYC, a pseudonymous account covering the airline industry, posted the notes. He wrote in the same post that the notes had been sent to him and that he could not vouch for the quotes inside them.

Musk did not wait for anyone to confirm them. Travel writer Gary Leff wrote up the report at View from the Wing, and Musk replied to Leff's post with one line: "He will lose his job over this." A few hours later, he suggested that a Delta flight would be a good place to wall off an AI system, since it would have no way to reach the internet.

Delta did not immediately respond when Yahoo Finance asked about the remarks.

Some of what the notes attribute to Bastian can be checked. According to the post, he told employees at an earlier event that Delta had tested Starlink but did not want to partner with Musk, and he pointed to Musk's reputation. The test happened. In April 2022, Bastian told the Wall Street Journal that Delta had held talks with SpaceX and tested Starlink on its planes, though he declined to give specifics, Fox Business reported at the time.

The notes also give a sense of the room. The same post has Bastian telling employees that Delta would earn about 70% of the airline industry's profits with roughly 20% of its market share.

The public record is a story about money and Amazon. When Delta announced the deal on March 31, Bastian called Leo "the fastest and most cost-effective technology available." The release leaned heavily on the broader Amazon relationship. Delta has moved nearly 600 of its applications to Amazon Web Services since 2020, and the two companies said they would bring AWS, Leo, and AI to bear on the whole travel experience. Installation begins in 2028 on an initial 500 aircraft. Service will be free to SkyMiles members, Amazon said, and Delta plans to run it through Delta Sync, the airline's loyalty-linked Wi-Fi platform.

In May, Musk went after Sync rather than Bastian. Replying to Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt, he wrote that SpaceX does not allow a login portal in front of Starlink, and that Delta had wanted to make Wi-Fi "painful, difficult and expensive for their customers." A Delta spokesperson told Business Insider the claim was "not accurate" and said passengers would still have reached Sync through a SkyMiles login. Business Insider pointed out that United ties its own Starlink service to MileagePlus, its loyalty program.

Bastian gave his version to Bloomberg five days later. "Amazon brings a lot more than just satellite technology," he said, pointing to its retail business, Prime, and gaming technology, which he said Starlink does not have. He also said Amazon's price was far lower than anything Delta had seen from Starlink, and that he expected Starlink to call Leo an inferior product but was not worried about it, Business Insider reported.

JonNYC's own sourcing leans toward money. In a follow-up, he cited a source who described the sticking points as mainly financial, Yahoo Finance reported.

Ryanair went through a version of this in January. Its chief executive, Michael O'Leary, ruled out Starlink for Ryanair's jets, citing the fuel cost of the drag from its antennas. After O'Leary called Musk an idiot on Irish radio, Musk posted, "Ryanair CEO is an utter idiot. Fire him."

When a follower suggested Musk buy the airline and dismiss O'Leary himself, Musk agreed it was a good idea. Delta's turn came in stages. On Monday, author John LeFevre posted that United had more than 600 Starlink-equipped planes and Delta had none, and Musk replied that Delta would lose many customers. The line about Bastian's job came the next day.

Amazon says it had deployed 396 Leo satellites as of July and plans an initial service rollout later this year. Starlink had 11,133 satellites in orbit as of September 28, according to tracking data kept by astronomer Jonathan McDowell. United reported in July that Starlink was on 450 of its aircraft, with nearly 1,000 expected by the end of this year and the whole fleet by the end of 2027. It said Wi-Fi satisfaction on those flights ran more than twice as high as on its other Wi-Fi-equipped aircraft.

American announced in May that it will install Starlink on more than 500 narrowbody jets beginning in early 2027. Southwest expects Starlink on more than 300 of its aircraft by the end of this year.

Delta's current Wi-Fi, provided through Viasat and Hughes and sponsored by T-Mobile, is free for SkyMiles members on more than 1,150 aircraft, according to the airline's March release. Yahoo Finance noted there is no data yet showing frequent fliers switching airlines over it.

Delta's first Leo installations are scheduled for 2028. If United sticks to its own schedule, every plane it flies will have Starlink before the first one goes on.