In this paper, trellis decoding methods with Reed Solomon (RS) codes are proposed as an efficient coding schemes in mobile satellite communication systems. These schemes can be used adaptively in time varying fading conditions of mobile satellite communication channels. Simulations have been performed using a mobile satellite channel model as well as using an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel model. The results showed that the proposed schemes can achieve a better performance with less decoder complexity than a rate 1/2 constraint length 7 convolutional code in any fading environment.