The most profitable airline in America decided it didn’t want to buy its in-flight internet from Elon Musk, and Musk has handled that about how you’d expect. “He will lose his job over this,” he posted on X last week about Delta Air Lines (DAL) chief Ed Bastian, reacting to unconfirmed reports that Bastian had knocked him in employee meetings. Alison Sider’s story in Monday’s Journal lays out the feud, and underneath it a real fight: free, fast Wi-Fi has become the amenity airlines compete on, and Delta picked Amazon (AMZN) over Starlink to supply it.
The deal, struck earlier this year, puts Amazon’s Leo satellite service on an initial 500 Delta planes. Bastian’s pitch at the time: Leo would match Starlink on speed at a lower cost, and the tie-up would deepen a relationship that already runs through Amazon Web Services — with Amazon’s retail, gaming and video businesses as a bonus. The catch is the calendar — service doesn’t start until 2028, and Amazon is far behind Starlink in getting satellites into orbit. In the meantime Delta flies on Viasat and Hughes, says most of its fleet already streams, and reminds everyone it was the carrier that killed Wi-Fi fees back when only JetBlue gave it away.
Delta has mostly let the posts go by without answering; it isn’t commenting on Musk, and it isn’t confirming that Bastian said what’s being attributed to him online. Its rivals have been louder. United Airlines (UAL), which already runs Starlink on close to half its daily flights and plans to have the whole fleet equipped by the end of next year, put up a page offering to match Delta and American fliers’ elite status — “Don’t keep buffering.” American, which starts installing Starlink across hundreds of aircraft next year, answered with a status match of its own for fliers reconsidering their loyalty. Frontier chimed in to say it’s getting Starlink next year. Musk has been here before: he demanded Ryanair fire Michael O’Leary over a Starlink snub, Ryanair ran a “Big ‘Idiot’ Seat Sale” off the insult, and O’Leary is still running the airline.
Noise, then the number
Here’s what matters for anyone holding a ticket or a share. A Wi-Fi vendor is a 2028 question. A billionaire’s temper is a this-week question. Neither shows up in Friday’s earnings, where the Journal’s Ticker lists the FactSet estimate for Delta at $1.88 a share against $1.71 a year ago. That’s the number the stock trades on, and it has nothing to do with who’s angry on X.
Our read
We file this under Investments/Risk (IN04), with a Cash Flow (M5) footnote for travelers. Positions first: Delta isn’t owned here. Amazon is held in 19 of the house books and United in 3, both at weight, nothing added — and we wouldn’t buy Amazon because it won a contract that pays off in 2028, any more than we’d sell an airline because a supplier it passed over is sore. The planning habit is the one we use every time a holding lands in a shouting match: ask what changed in the cash flows, and when. If the answer is nothing yet, the headline is weather, not climate.
The footnote is real money, though. Status matches are a rare moment when loyalty programs bid for you instead of the other way around. If you fly Delta mainly for the perks and United’s network serves your home airport, the match is a free option worth a look; if Delta’s schedule is why you fly Delta, a Wi-Fi feud isn’t a reason to switch. Either way it’s the kind of small decision that goes better after a calm look at the whole picture — read the departures board before the gate changes, not after.