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Qatar Airways Flies The World’s First Starlink-Equipped 787-9
With 150 widebodies fitted and over 23 million passengers online since 2024, the Gulf carrier is close to making free satellite Wi-Fi standard fleetwide.
For most of commercial aviation’s modern history, closing the cabin door meant leaving the internet behind. Qatar Airways has spent nearly two years dismantling that idea, and this week it logged another first.
The Doha-based carrier has become the first airline in the world to operate a Starlink-equipped Boeing 787-9, and has finished fitting its 787-8 sub-fleet in seven months. That takes its Starlink-equipped widebody count to 150. More than half of its 787 fleet now carries the system, with the rest on track for completion by the end of 2026.
The airline upgraded its Boeing 777s in just nine months and its Airbus A350s in eight, and now operates the world’s first and largest Starlink-enabled fleets of all three types. The wider program has passed 83 percent completion, with up to 323 Starlink flights operating daily.
Uptake has been swift. More than 23 million passengers have connected since the service launched in October 2024, across over 86,000 flights. At speeds of up to 500 Mbps, SpaceX’s low-Earth-orbit constellation delivers something closer to home broadband than the sluggish, metered Wi-Fi that long defined flying. Qatar Airways was also the first carrier to offer Starlink on long-haul and ultra-long-haul routes across six continents, from the Americas and Australasia to gateways across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
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There are, of course, a few caveats. The Wi-Fi is free and gate-to-gate, but access runs through Privilege Club authentication or enrollment, making onboard connectivity a subtle funnel into the airline’s loyalty program. Gate-to-gate coverage can also lapse at certain airports because of local regulatory requirements, and aircraft assignments on some routes may change for operational reasons.
With all that being said, it’s clear that satellite broadband is beginning to shift from novelty to standard fit, and competition among long-haul carriers is becoming less about whether the service exists, and more about bandwidth — meaning long flights are no longer an excuse to be unreachable.
News
Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon
Foreign visitors will be the first users to benefit, but whether Syria’s own banks and cardholders follow is still an open question.
Visa is returning to Syria. Its first live international card transaction in the country was a test rather than a launch, and the milestone event ran through a Lebanese bank.
The acquirer (the bank on the merchant’s side of a card payment) was Fransabank Lebanon, with Paymera as the other named partner. Nadim Moujaes, who heads a Fransabank Group subsidiary, describes the test as both the culmination of “longstanding efforts to link Syria back to international payment networks” and “the first step in a larger path”.
Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa makes the first electronic payment in Syria using a @Visa card at a store in Damascus, following the lifting of US sanctions on Syria. pic.twitter.com/lpAN7nQ6Fc
— Tech Magazine (@TechMGZN) August 27, 2026
“We are excited to have successfully tested live transactions today as we plan to enable international visitors to use their Visa cards while in Syria,” says Leila Serhan, Visa’s senior vice president and group country manager for the North Africa, Levant and Pakistan region. Although a significant first step, that plan doesn’t come with a hard date for when a visitor’s card will work normally.
Mohammed Safwat Raslan, governor of the Central Bank of Syria, says the test paves the way for international card acceptance in Syria and that maintaining strong compliance, risk management and operational controls will remain essential. Serhan likewise stresses that Visa has worked within applicable legal, regulatory and compliance requirements. For a test transaction, it seems there was a great deal of attention paid to the rules, with the entire operation being carefully managed.
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The test is the latest step in a sequence that began in December 2025, when Visa announced a strategic roadmap to support Syria’s integration into the global digital economy. In February 2026 it hosted its first industry gathering of banks, ecosystem partners and policymakers in Damascus and, the same month, signed an agreement with Syria’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in San Francisco.
Michel Kattouah, Paymera’s CEO, called the test “the return of international card acceptance,” but while that’s positive news, there’s no word yet on when a Syrian bank will issue a Visa card to a Syrian customer.
Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon
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