United will use high speed internet and entertainment as a competitive advantage. Starlink will make about $80-100 million per year providing this service. IF all other airlines need to match this offering then this will end up being about $2.5 billion per year for Starlink.

The exact financial details of the agreement between United Airlines and Starlink for in-flight internet services have not been publicly disclosed.

Major US carriers like American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines have been mentioned with fleet sizes in the range of 800 to over 1,000 aircraft each. Including other significant carriers like Southwest, Alaska, JetBlue, etc.,. The top US carriers collectively operate somewhere in the ballpark of 7,000 to 8,000 passenger aircraft.

China operates about 4000 passenger aircraft.
Asian non-China airlines about 2500 passenger aircraft.
European carriers about 3500 passenger aircraft
Middle east about about 1000 passenger aircraft
Others like South America and rest of world 3000 passenger aircraft
This is in the range of 25,000 passenger aircraft.

Cost Estimates from Industry Insights:

There have been mentions on platforms like X of costs for such services. For instance, an estimate suggested that the cost might be around $10,000 per month per plane, which would amount to $120 million annually for over 1,000 planes. However, United might have negotiated a bulk discount, potentially bringing the annual cost down to somewhere between $80-100 million/year.

Bulk Discount and Long-term Agreement: Given the scale of United's fleet, it's reasonable to assume that United would receive a significant discount for such a large-scale deployment. Long-term agreements often come with reduced rates, especially when they involve thousands of units.