According to speakers at last week\u2019s Global Connected Aircraft Summit in Washington, D.C., the airline industry has reached an inflection point in which connectivity is becoming a commodity, rather than just a luxury. During a conversation on the next generation of In-Flight Connectivity (IFC) services, panelists agreed that customer expectations have surpassed what many airlines are currently able to offer, and that businesses that wish to stay relevant will have to quickly improve the ways they exploit bandwidth.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere in the United States [connectivity] is an expectation. People fly on airplanes based on the fact there is Wi-Fi on the plane. No longer do everyday passengers expect to have a relaxing, unplugged two to four hour trip,\u201d said Jon Merritt, director of flight operations, CNS programs and cockpit technology for United Airlines<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Jon Norris, senior director of corporate sales and marketing for Panasonic Avionics<\/strong>, spoke similarly, stating that it\u2019s only a matter of time before the majority of Panasonic\u2019s airline customers that have not yet introduced connectivity start to do so. \u201cEven those that have been slow to the game are making a commitment to move forward. Over the next five to 10 years, every commercial aircraft is going to have IFC. It\u2019s going to be a necessity for doing business,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n And it isn\u2019t just for the passenger experience. \u201cWe haven\u2019t even touched the surface of the operational efficiency that can be generated through the use of IFC,\u201d Norris added.<\/p>\n Hardware & Challenges<\/strong><\/p>\n As Tara Bamburg, associate manager of product development for Southwest Airlines<\/strong>, pointed out in a panel on the passenger experience, one of the biggest challenges of keeping up with customer demand is equipage costs and revenue lost as a result of grounding planes for maintenance. \u201cConnectivity is an added value and an expectation for our customers, but it\u2019s not worth grounding a plane for multiple days,\u201d she argued.<\/p>\n \u201cAirlines care almost more than anything about having the airplane stay flying,\u201d echoed David Bijur, North America regional president for Gogo<\/strong>. Consequently, he said, the industry should focus on implementing hardware that can be easily adapted for new services, or that can be cost-effectively swapped out. \u201cWhen we think about the roadmap, particularly for the vendors, what we really need are Line-Replaceable Units (LRUs) that can withstand the test of time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Mark Rich, vice president of connected fleet for Airbus<\/strong>, also suggested taking a more holistic approach to hardware: \u201cOften reliability is improved through redundancy. But every time we add a new IFC capability it\u2019s adding yet another system to our aircraft. Every new thing we add to our aircraft adds to the cost,\u201d he said, \u201cWe\u2019re looking at how can we go about creating much more integrated IFC solutions. Here, it\u2019s not a stack of individual solutions but rather a collection of solutions that work together. Rather than rely upon one antenna how can we support multiple antennas?\u201d<\/p>\n Future Landscape<\/strong><\/p>\n Panelists expressed differences in opinion when it came to what connectivity might look like for airplanes in the future. Norris said that while he does believe airlines can significantly improve the experience from where it is today, he doesn\u2019t foresee the aviation industry ever catching up with internet performance on the ground. \u201cI think that\u2019s an unrealistic goal to achieve,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n However, Meherwan Polad, senior director of business development for commercial mobile systems at ViaSat<\/strong>, said that the only real limiting factor is the cost of bandwidth. \u201cI\u2019d like to challenge the notion we can\u2019t do in the air what we do on the ground. We\u2019re taking that same network and bringing it to the air. JetBlue<\/strong> is taking that and extending fully free internet to everybody,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen it comes to antennas and modems, we\u2019re investing in those. Do they matter as much as bandwidth? No.\u201d<\/p>\n Low-cost bandwidth also opens the door to countless operational benefits, Polad added. \u201cWhether it\u2019s streaming live engine data or tracking the number of paninis in your food trolley, all that stuff can go down live. There\u2019s no need to skimp and save when you\u2019ve got plentiful, low-cost bandwidth,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Still, the panelists agreed the future is hard to predict. No one can say exactly what new applications will explode in the near future, what new hardware will be necessary, or how customers will want to use connectivity. \u201cSocial media is really exploding today \u2026 but in the end, do we know what\u2019s next? No,\u201d Polad said \u201cWhat can you do to prepare for that? The only thing you can do is have a lot of bandwidth. We don\u2019t know what\u2019s coming \u2014 all we know is it\u2019s going to be bandwidth-intensive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" According to speakers at last week\u2019s Global Connected Aircraft Summit in Washington, D.C., the airline industry has reached an inflection point in which connectivity is becoming a commodity, rather than just a luxury. 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