Gogo Starts Shipping Galileo HDX Systems

Starlink’s honeymoon as a breakout connectivity option for business aviation has ended.

After a short delay that it attributed to a late change in FAA testing requirements, rival Gogo announced in March that it had received Parts Manufacturer Approval (PMA) from the agency to begin building the HDX electronically steered antenna. The company then started shipping the satcom terminal to its dealers, who are developing supplemental type certificates (STC) to fit it on a wide range of business jets and turboprops.

As of April, Gogo listed STCs in development or completed on 34 aircraft types from eight manufacturers. STC installations were already available for Airbus Corporate Jets, the Embraer Phenom 300/E and the Gulfstream G280.

Designed for small to midsize business aircraft, the flat-panel, fuselage-mounted HDX antenna with Gogo Avance modem/router platform connects with the Eutelsat OneWeb constellation of 648 Ku-band, low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites. Christened Galileo, Gogo’s new high-speed satcom service offers the first direct competition to Starlink, an LEO satellite-based, K_u-band service that has captivated business aviation since late 2023.

“Our pipeline is in the hundreds and hundreds of customers who have in mind to get this installed,” Gogo CEO Chris Moore tells BCA. “The amount of STCs that are being developed by the dealers shows the interest we have in the antenna. We’ll have more STCs than any other NGSO [non-geostationary satellite orbit] provider.”

During a fourth-quarter 2024 earnings call with analysts in March, Gogo Executive Chairman Oakleigh Thorne described FAA PMA of the HDX terminal as a watershed moment for Gogo and the “first deliverable from a massive three-year investment program.”

Added to Galileo, Gogo plans to launch its new but significantly delayed 5G air-to-ground (ATG) service for North America later this year. With grant funding from the U.S. FCC Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program, the company is upgrading its classic ATG network to 4G LTE standard by replacing Chinese-made equipment in its ground network.

With its acquisition of Satcom Direct (SD) in December 2024, Gogo also supplies equipment for other satellite inflight connectivity providers. Its tail-mounted, mechanically steered “Plane Simple” antennas connect with Intelsat’s FlexExec Ku-band and Viasat’s Jet ConneX Ka-band services, both based on geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) satellite networks. The enlarged portfolio backs Gogo’s claim of being the only multi-orbit, multi-band provider of inflight connectivity to business as well as military and government aviation.

Gogo was selling SD’s former headquarters facility in Melbourne, Florida, and had relocated the company’s manufacturing operations from the Ottawa suburb of Kenata, Canada, to its base in Broomfield, Colorado. Gogo manufactures the Avance system in Broomfield; partner Hughes Network Systems builds the Galileo HDX antenna in Germantown, Maryland.

Galileo will battle Starlink on installation cost and performance, among other factors. “Our target number is we want to get installs in under $400,000,” including the equipment, Moore says, basing the estimate on a hypothetical Phenom 300. The number is roughly comparable to buying and installing a Starlink system on a turboprop or light jet, according to one installer who spoke with BCA.

“We’re a service-based business; we’ve priced the equipment appropriately,” Moore adds. “Our aim is to make this a very easy-to-access product portfolio for customers with small, medium and large jets. It’s not just a large-jet product.”

Gogo says the HDX terminal will support peak download speeds of 60 Mbps, and a software upgrade could increase throughput by 20%–30%. An FDX antenna the company expects to launch later this year—designed for larger business jets—will support speeds up to 195 Mbps.

Operators using Starlink have reported downloads in the 200 Mbps range. During a demonstration flight of Starlink in a Cessna Citation 560XL last October, BCA and other media clocked download speeds of up to 150 Mbps.

Starlink “has done a great job of being very disruptive,” Moore says. “It’s probably what the industry needed, so fair play to them on that.”

He adds that Gogo, a legacy provider of inflight connectivity to business aircraft, has worked closely with dealers on STCs and probably brought Galileo to market in less time than SpaceX did with Starlink.

“By the end of this year, we’ll have more STCs than them or anybody else,” Moore says. “That’s not a derogatory comment toward their product—it’s just that aviation is what we do.”