GOGO • COMPANY PROFILE
GALILEO, GALILEO
Even if it had not bought Satcom Direct, 2025 was always going to be a big year for Gogo. This year is all about taking the fight to Starlink. Words: Alasdair Whyte
Ready for the fight: Chris Moore, CEO, Gogo is looking forward to competing with Starlink this year.
GOGO
GALILEO, GALILEO
Even if it had not bought Satcom Direct, 2025 was always going to be a big year for Gogo. This year is all about taking the fight to Starlink. Words: Alasdair Whyte
Ready for the fight: Chris Moore, CEO, Gogo is looking forward to competing with Starlink this year.
COMPANY PROFILE
CHRIS MOORE’S first year as CEO of Gogo has been frantic. In his words: “Nuts.” Not only has he had to manage the merger of Satcom Direct, but also three of the firm’s key long-term projects finally went live.
Moore joined Gogo in December 2024 after the company acquired Satcom Direct, which he had led for almost six years. He initially assumed that as soon as the sale closed he would be looking for a new job. Instead, he was appointed CEO.
Last year was always going to be a crucial year for Gogo – even without the Satcom Direct acquisition. As well as adding low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite connectivity to its offering, Gogo was also upgrading its air-to-ground network, where aircraft pick up signals from the top of cell towers. As part of all these projects the company received many Supplemental Type Certificates (STCs) from regulators around the world.
“It has been nuts,” says Moore. “A year ago, we did not have Galileo kits to ship, now we have the kits. We did not have the 5G chips, now we have the chips. We did not have the 5G network, now we have it. It has been a crazy year.”
Taking the fight to Starlink
Gogo announced that it would be offering LEO satellite connectivity with OneWeb (now Eutelsat OneWeb) back in May 2022. It branded this Gogo Galileo. Gogo had hoped to launch Galileo as early as 2023, but the OneWeb constellation of satellites was only completed in March 2024. Gogo then needed FAA approval for its products.
This allowed Elon Musk’s Starlink to beat Gogo to launch. In September 2023, Flexjet announced that it had received a STC to install Starlink on Gulfstream G650 aircraft – the first being Musk’s own. Since then, Starlink has signed up a strong network of installation partners and received many more STCs. Early customer feedback, including from Flexjet, has been good. Starlink is also cheaper than legacy options.
Moore says that Gogo is just as competitive on speed and cost: “We did a flight yesterday with a customer for the Galileo FDX [antennae for larger aircraft] on a BBJ, and we did 36 Gigabytes – a Gig a minute. They had 36 devices connected and were also having fun gaming.”
By the end of December 2025, Gogo had received Galileo STCs in the US, Europe, Brazil and Canada covering 31 different aircraft models. It expects to get at least 20 more STCs by the end of June 2026. “It typically takes three to six months to get a STC, so we have really been flying,” says Moore. By the end of 2025, Gogo Galileo was installed on 99 aircraft, one short of a century.
As well as being the first mover in the market, Starlink also benefits from name recognition from buyers. Many ultra-high-net-worth individuals already use Starlink in some of their homes. Anecdotally, captains also say that they are seeing owners spending much more time on their superyacht now that they have reliable Starlink connectivity.
Moore believes that its global sales and customer service network (particularly after the acquisition of Satcom Direct) and existing dealers (many of which also offer Starlink) can help it win Galileo customers.
The dark room that sheds light on connectivity: One of Gogo’s Network Operations Centres.
Well connected: An Action Aviation BBJ 737NG soon to wear a Gogo Galileo FDX terminal.
It is also working with aircraft manufacturers to have Galileo installed on new aircraft deliveries. Deals with Bombardier, Dassault, Embraer and Textron have already been announced and Gogo aims to be an option on all new business jets by the start of the second quarter of 2026.
“When you look at the terminals on their own, they look quite blunt and quite bricked, but we have worked with OEMs and MROs to make the fairings around them aerodynamically enabled,” says Moore. “They are very OEM- and MRO-friendly.”
Moore says that the biggest difference between Galileo and his competitor, is that Starlink is a closed network. It only lets you access Starlink satellites. He believes that customers want options. While Gogo chose the Eutelsat OneWeb LEO network for its Galileo antennas, Satcom Direct always used a range of geostationary (GEO) satellite providers – including Viasat, Intelsat and Inmarsat for its Plane Simple antennae. Moore says that with Gogo’s multi-orbit options, customers can access different satellites for best coverage. Geostationary satellites are further from the earth but can provide global coverage with just a few satellites. Eutelsat OneWeb has 648 satellites and Starlink almost 9,000.
Moore stresses that Gogo will continue to offer a range of options to customers. Gogo also provides air-to-ground connectivity in the continental US.
“Multi-orbit is compelling for customers with larger aircraft that fly globally,” says Moore. “Customers who fly everywhere want multiple systems. We saw this when GEO came out and made L-band systems redundant because the speeds were not competitive. But people kept it because you can still do something with a 20 Megabytes plus backup. It will be interesting to see how the balance works out between LEO and GEO. And for the technology evolution as well.”
Musk’s high profile political role has also concerned some international customers. Certain countries – including China – do not allow Starlink to be used. Heads of state and government customers, typically insist on options for this reason. “You should not think GEO is going away. We’ve got a lot of customers, especially the US Department of Defense, who are GEO-centric. Everybody forgets that there is a lot of GEO investment around the satellites as well, they are getting smaller and more capable,” says Moore.
Starlink has been a victim of its own success, particularly with many airline customers. This means there can be a waiting time for installation kits. “We are desperate to offer Starlink but can’t get hold of the kit,” says one distributor.
Moore says that Gogo can ship antennae the next day: “We have bought all the long lead item parts ahead of time, so we don't have any supply chain issues. We shipped over 150 HDXs before we even had an STC.”
Before the acquisition, Gogo had just three international salespeople. The Satcom Direct deal added offices around the world. It has used these teams to announce some high-profile Galileo customers including: Wheels Up in the US; Action Aviation and Falcon in the Middle East; Avcon Jet and Luxaviation in Europe and a large Brazilian multinational.
VistaJet also announced that it will be adding Galileo to its fleet of 270 aircraft. Vista expects to install Galileo on one of its aircraft every nine days, so will have at least 60 Gogo aircraft by the middle of 2027. By the end of the third quarter of last year, Gogo said it had a 1,000 aircraft Galileo customer pipeline.
Competition for customers is fierce. In 2024, NetJets announced an agreement with Gogo for both air-to-ground and Galileo connectivity. Starlink appears to have fought back and taken many of NetJets’ 600 larger aircraft, according to a NetJets’ announcement in December 2025.
As the CEO of a publicly listed company, Moore is wary about giving future guidance on market share. But while he is happy for Starlink to sign-up as many airlines as it wants (Gogo sold its commercial airline business to Intelsat in 2020), he will not let Starlink dominate business aviation.
“There has been a lot of focus on LEO in the last few years and customers have been waiting for us to have a working product,” says Moore. “We have had a couple of big wins with Galileo, and the next 12 months is really about getting Galileo out there and capturing market share.”
Going for government
Satcom Direct always had a significant number of government contracts, but these were never a focus for Gogo. The acquisition has changed this.
“The Galileo products bring the two companies together. So now we have an instant pipeline for Galileo products,” says Moore. “We've already got the Gogo Galileo HDX flying on UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles]. That is pretty cool. This is something Gogo would never have done.”
In 2025, Gogo announced a five-year contract with a US Federal agency covering 5G, LEO and GEO bandwidth services. It is also supplying GEO antennas to SES Space and Defense (the main connectivity companies are often customers, suppliers and competitors to each other at the same time) for US Space Force Space Command. A $33m contract.
The US Air Force had announced a target of getting at least 25-megabit speeds on a quarter of its 1,100 non-fighter aircraft by the end of 2025. It failed. Retired General Mike Minihan who conceived this “25 by 25 initiative” has just joined Gogo’s board.
Future of air-to-ground
Gogo’s air-to-ground network was famously conceived in a Texas barbecue restaurant when its founder, Jimmy Ray, sketched his idea on a napkin. That was in 1991. Moore says that 25 years after getting its first US Federal Communications Commission licence, air-to-ground is still needed. Even with LEO options.
“ATG is in a really good place. If you walk in and see the Cirrus Vision Jet, King Airs or PC-12s, the first thing the OEMs will say is that ATG is an option on that plane,” says Moore, who is a piston aircraft pilot. “When you get to those smaller airframes, you are in a different market space from Gulfstream customers. With 5G we can offer very fast speeds at a good price.”
Gogo is in the process of ending legacy contracts with airlines. This will free up more capacity for business aviation and government customers. As part of its air-to-ground upgrades, Gogo has also replaced foreign telecoms equipment. Moore says that now this is completed, they are seeing a lot of interest from US government customers (including existing Satcom Direct customers).
“Air-to-ground is a complementary product for both LEO and GEO. We can combine all of this into the service offering and then mange the network delivery,” says Moore. “So, if you are flying with me, you can do a Teams call on LEO, while I am watching Netflix on air-to-ground – without anyone realising. Everyone also forgets that pilots use a lot of data, so they can be on air-to-ground and the principal on GEO. This has a lot of value. No one cares about technical aspects if they are connected.”
Not just Starlink
Business jet owners are also soon going to have even more LEO options. Viasat has signed an agreement with Canada’s Telesat for its Lightspeed LEO Ka-band capacity. “We believe that the most important thing for business jet connectivity is to have consistency and reliability, which we deliver utilising our high-capacity GEO satellites,” says Claudio D’Amico, vice president, strategic market engagement, Viasat. “By bringing a LEO component to the mix, now we have full redundancy of the existing network and we’re able to improve the performance by intelligently routing the traffic to the best link.”
Viasat is aiming to have this service available in the last quarter of 2027. Amazon is expected to start offering its Amazon Leo (formerly Kuiper) network to business aviation soon. Moore says that Gogo is open to working with a range of providers.
Moore wants customers to know that Gogo is working hard to future-proof technology. “The market is continuing to evolve and we want to upgrade technology in the future. We are looking at installations like an iPhone case. If the case is fixed to the fuselage, the mounting, to the fairing, I should be able to take that phone out and put a new device in,” he says. “When there is a revolution in the technology, we want to upgrade the technology and upgrade the STCs, without large customer upheaval or investment. That’s a different approach from installing a new antenna.”
In the short term, Moore is heading into his second year as CEO knowing exactly what needs to be done. Gogo believes there is a fleet of 41,000 business and general aircraft to target. Only a quarter of these have broadband connections.
He adds: “2026 is all about execution. We have to offer consistently good customer service around the world and just keep selling as many of these things as we can.”
It is also working with aircraft manufacturers to have Galileo installed on new aircraft deliveries. Deals with Bombardier, Dassault, Embraer and Textron have already been announced and Gogo aims to be an option on all new business jets by the start of the second quarter of 2026.
“When you look at the terminals on their own, they look quite blunt and quite bricked, but we have worked with OEMs and MROs to make the fairings around them aerodynamically enabled,” says Moore. “They are very OEM- and MRO-friendly.”
Moore says that the biggest difference between Galileo and his competitor, is that Starlink is a closed network. It only lets you access Starlink satellites. He believes that customers want options. While Gogo chose the Eutelsat OneWeb LEO network for its Galileo antennas, Satcom Direct always used a range of geostationary (GEO) satellite providers – including Viasat, Intelsat and Inmarsat for its Plane Simple antennae. Moore says that with Gogo’s multi-orbit options, customers can access different satellites for best coverage. Geostationary satellites are further from the earth but can provide global coverage with just a few satellites. Eutelsat OneWeb has 648 satellites and Starlink almost 9,000.
Moore stresses that Gogo will continue to offer a range of options to customers. Gogo also provides air-to-ground connectivity in the continental US.
“Multi-orbit is compelling for customers with larger aircraft that fly globally,” says Moore. “Customers who fly everywhere want multiple systems. We saw this when GEO came out and made L-band systems redundant because the speeds were not competitive. But people kept it because you can still do something with a 20 Megabytes plus backup. It will be interesting to see how the balance works out between LEO and GEO. And for the technology evolution as well.”
Musk’s high profile political role has also concerned some international customers. Certain countries – including China – do not allow Starlink to be used. Heads of state and government customers, typically insist on options for this reason. “You should not think GEO is going away. We’ve got a lot of customers, especially the US Department of Defense, who are GEO-centric. Everybody forgets that there is a lot of GEO investment around the satellites as well, they are getting smaller and more capable,” says Moore.
Starlink has been a victim of its own success, particularly with many airline customers. This means there can be a waiting time for installation kits. “We are desperate to offer Starlink but can’t get hold of the kit,” says one distributor.
Moore says that Gogo can ship antennae the next day: “We have bought all the long lead item parts ahead of time, so we don't have any supply chain issues. We shipped over 150 HDXs before we even had an STC.”
Before the acquisition, Gogo had just three international salespeople. The Satcom Direct deal added offices around the world. It has used these teams to announce some high-profile Galileo customers including: Wheels Up in the US; Action Aviation and Falcon in the Middle East; Avcon Jet and Luxaviation in Europe and a large Brazilian multinational.
VistaJet also announced that it will be adding Galileo to its fleet of 270 aircraft. Vista expects to install Galileo on one of its aircraft every nine days, so will have at least 60 Gogo aircraft by the middle of 2027. By the end of the third quarter of last year, Gogo said it had a 1,000 aircraft Galileo customer pipeline.
Competition for customers is fierce. In 2024, NetJets announced an agreement with Gogo for both air-to-ground and Galileo connectivity. Starlink appears to have fought back and taken many of NetJets’ 600 larger aircraft, according to a NetJets’ announcement in December 2025.
As the CEO of a publicly listed company, Moore is wary about giving future guidance on market share. But while he is happy for Starlink to sign-up as many airlines as it wants (Gogo sold its commercial airline business to Intelsat in 2020), he will not let Starlink dominate business aviation.
“There has been a lot of focus on LEO in the last few years and customers have been waiting for us to have a working product,” says Moore. “We have had a couple of big wins with Galileo, and the next 12 months is really about getting Galileo out there and capturing market share.”
Going for government
Satcom Direct always had a significant number of government contracts, but these were never a focus for Gogo. The acquisition has changed this.
“The Galileo products bring the two companies together. So now we have an instant pipeline for Galileo products,” says Moore. “We've already got the Gogo Galileo HDX flying on UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles]. That is pretty cool. This is something Gogo would never have done.”
In 2025, Gogo announced a five-year contract with a US Federal agency covering 5G, LEO and GEO bandwidth services. It is also supplying GEO antennas to SES Space and Defense (the main connectivity companies are often customers, suppliers and competitors to each other at the same time) for US Space Force Space Command. A $33m contract.
The US Air Force had announced a target of getting at least 25-megabit speeds on a quarter of its 1,100 non-fighter aircraft by the end of 2025. It failed. Retired General Mike Minihan who conceived this “25 by 25 initiative” has just joined Gogo’s board.
Future of air-to-ground
Gogo’s air-to-ground network was famously conceived in a Texas barbecue restaurant when its founder, Jimmy Ray, sketched his idea on a napkin. That was in 1991. Moore says that 25 years after getting its first US Federal Communications Commission licence, air-to-ground is still needed. Even with LEO options.
“ATG is in a really good place. If you walk in and see the Cirrus Vision Jet, King Airs or PC-12s, the first thing the OEMs will say is that ATG is an option on that plane,” says Moore, who is a piston aircraft pilot. “When you get to those smaller airframes, you are in a different market space from Gulfstream customers. With 5G we can offer very fast speeds at a good price.”
Gogo is in the process of ending legacy contracts with airlines. This will free up more capacity for business aviation and government customers. As part of its air-to-ground upgrades, Gogo has also replaced foreign telecoms equipment. Moore says that now this is completed, they are seeing a lot of interest from US government customers (including existing Satcom Direct customers).
“Air-to-ground is a complementary product for both LEO and GEO. We can combine all of this into the service offering and then mange the network delivery,” says Moore. “So, if you are flying with me, you can do a Teams call on LEO, while I am watching Netflix on air-to-ground – without anyone realising. Everyone also forgets that pilots use a lot of data, so they can be on air-to-ground and the principal on GEO. This has a lot of value. No one cares about technical aspects if they are connected.”
Not just Starlink
Business jet owners are also soon going to have even more LEO options. Viasat has signed an agreement with Canada’s Telesat for its Lightspeed LEO Ka-band capacity. “We believe that the most important thing for business jet connectivity is to have consistency and reliability, which we deliver utilising our high-capacity GEO satellites,” says Claudio D’Amico, vice president, strategic market engagement, Viasat. “By bringing a LEO component to the mix, now we have full redundancy of the existing network and we’re able to improve the performance by intelligently routing the traffic to the best link.”
Viasat is aiming to have this service available in the last quarter of 2027. Amazon is expected to start offering its Amazon Leo (formerly Kuiper) network to business aviation soon. Moore says that Gogo is open to working with a range of providers.
Moore wants customers to know that Gogo is working hard to future-proof technology. “The market is continuing to evolve and we want to upgrade technology in the future. We are looking at installations like an iPhone case. If the case is fixed to the fuselage, the mounting, to the fairing, I should be able to take that phone out and put a new device in,” he says. “When there is a revolution in the technology, we want to upgrade the technology and upgrade the STCs, without large customer upheaval or investment. That’s a different approach from installing a new antenna.”
In the short term, Moore is heading into his second year as CEO knowing exactly what needs to be done. Gogo believes there is a fleet of 41,000 business and general aircraft to target. Only a quarter of these have broadband connections.
He adds: “2026 is all about execution. We have to offer consistently good customer service around the world and just keep selling as many of these things as we can.”
GOGO 101
Connectivity companies love using acronyms, abbreviations and brand names. So here is a guide to what the company is working on in 2026. With as few capital letters as possible.
Gogo Galileo – low earth orbit satellite
Gogo Galileo uses Eutelsat OneWeb’s low-earth orbit satellite network. It offers two different antennas allowing aircraft to connect to it. The (imaginatively named) FDX is for larger jets and offers up to 200 Megabytes per second. This is a lot faster than most houses have. The smaller HDX antennae is designed for mid- and smaller aircraft and has speeds of up to 60Mbs – which is considered decent for most houses.
A subscription to Gogo Galileo is about the same cost as for Starlink. Gogo argues that they also have a lot of value-adds including, training, cybersecurity and a global customer service team.
Gogo Biz Network (LTE)
Gogo started as an air-to-ground company building a network in the mainland US and has a large fleet of 7,500 aircraft already signed up. Like traditional mobile companies, it has invested to upgrade to 5G (fifth generation cellular service). On December 29th, 2025, it turned this 5G air-to-ground network on.
It says that 5G provides similar speeds to satellite connectivity for less money. Gogo says it offers 80 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload.
This means that you could have 10 different users on different video conferences at the same time (it is unclear how often you would need this).
It had 450 aircraft pre-provisioned for the 5G by the end 2025. The first installation was in December 2025 in time for the network switch on. It is a relatively simple upgrade.
Gogo Biz Network (LTE)
Like other telecoms regulators around the world, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have been pushing telecom companies to upgrade networks. These are called long-term evolution (LTE) standards.
Gogo was ordered to shut down its legacy network and move to new equipment. (One of the FCC’s main drivers with the programme was removing foreign equipment from the entire US telecom system). This is often referred to as the FCC “rip and replace” programme (even if it sounds like putting a new plaster on a cut knee).
The FCC has told Gogo it needs to complete this action by May 2026.
Existing Gogo customers need to either install a C-1 box or upgrade to AVANCE in order to stay connected. The C-1 box is a simple switch, with many happening in the field rather than in a maintenance shop. Up until the end of 2025, Gogo had also been paying a $35,000 rebate for the basic C1 upgrade to cover the cost. In 2025, Gogo sold more than 1,600 air-to-ground units, more than 700 of these were for C-1 upgrades.
