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Elon Musk has stepped up his public attacks on Delta Air Lines, mocking the carrier's in-flight internet after it chose Amazon's Leo satellite service over Starlink, the satellite network run by his company SpaceX.
"Best way to sandbox an AI is to put it on a Delta flight – it will have no chance of accessing the Internet!" Musk wrote on X.
The joke refers to a common safety practice in artificial intelligence, where developers test an AI system in an isolated "sandbox" with no outside connections. Musk's point was that Delta's Wi-Fi is so poor that it would serve the same purpose.
A widening feud with Delta's CEO
The post is the latest in a string of attacks on Delta and its chief executive officer, Ed Bastian. Musk recently predicted that Bastian would "lose his job" after remarks attributed to the Delta CEO suggested the airline had turned down Starlink partly because it did not want to work with Musk. Delta has not confirmed that Bastian made those comments.
A day before the sandbox post, Musk wrote that "Delta will lose a lot of customers," replying to a user who compared Delta with United Airlines, which is rolling out Starlink across its fleet. United said in July that Starlink was installed on 450 of its mainline and regional aircraft, and that it aims to cover its entire fleet by the end of 2027.
Earlier this year, Musk criticized the way Delta wanted the service to work. He said SpaceX wanted Starlink to run without an "annoying portal" that passengers have to log into, and argued that Delta's plan would make the service more cumbersome for customers.
Why Delta chose Amazon
Delta will begin installing Amazon Leo on 500 aircraft in 2028 and will connect the service to Delta Sync, its in-flight entertainment and loyalty platform. Bastian has described Leo as "the fastest and most cost-effective technology available," and pointed to Delta's existing relationship with Amazon Web Services, Amazon's cloud computing business.
Delta already offers free Wi-Fi, presented by T-Mobile, on more than 1,200 aircraft. The airline says the service has recorded more than 160 million customer sessions since launch, that most of its global network now supports streaming-quality
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