According to panelists at the Global Connected Aircraft Summit, the technology that powers connectivity must still make some strides before most airlines can afford to offer free Wi-Fi services. As guest speakers shared their thoughts on passenger experience on Thursday, they concluded that a business model where customers pay for connectivity will continue to be the norm for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n
Icelandair<\/strong>, for example, already has its entire fleet connected and is working on simplifying the experience for its customers, said Ingigerdur Erlingsdottir, project manager for marketing and business development. But although the company is able to provide a range of services for its passengers, the cost of bandwidth is still too high for the airline to offer those services for free. \u201cAs soon as it is less costly for us it\u2019s more likely to become free,\u201d Erlingsdottir said. Unfortunately, she added, some customers already expect to be connected for no cost.<\/p>\n Interestingly, Erlingsdottir highlighted a difference in culture between American and European passengers. \u201cWe have two different pricings from routes to Europe and North America, and we\u2019re seeing quite a difference in the usage between those routes. It seems that North America is more prepared to pay for connectivity than Europe has been,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing twice as much takeup in routes to America.\u201d<\/p>\n Erlingsdottir suggested a few likely explanations for the difference, the first being that North American frequent flyers have grown accustomed to connectivity on their domestic flights. Also, because flights through Europe are generally shorter, customers are less willing to pay to stay connected \u2014 and if they do, it\u2019s because they have to for business purposes rather than for entertainment.<\/p>\n Currently, Icelandair offers free connectivity to just a small subset of its customers \u2014 \u201cGold members\u201d \u2014 which is a business model that many other airlines have adopted as well.<\/p>\n Southwest Airlines <\/strong>also has a split model, with only its \u201cA-list preferred\u201d customers receiving the service for free, said Tara Bamburg, Southwest\u2019s associate manager of product development. For its other customers, the airline charges $8 for all-day use on a device. \u201cWe feel that $8 is reasonable for the service we offer currently,\u201d she said. \u201cI think as more airlines enter into the space and start setting their own pricing models, we\u2019re going to see a shifting in that.\u201d<\/p>\n In particular, Bamburg said she expects to see more tiered business models emerge based on the differing connectivity speeds airlines can offer. \u201cYou\u2019ll start to see really similar pricing across the entire industry,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Bamburg noted too that she believes Southwest customers understand the technical limitations of offering ubiquitous free Wi-Fi. \u201cI\u2019ve sat in a crowded coffee shop,\u201d she explained. When there are dozens, if not hundreds, of devices all competing for the same bandwidth, it \u201cdegrades the overall experience,\u201d she said, which is why many Southwest customers don\u2019t see $8 as a unfair financial investment for a full day of use.<\/p>\n Meeting customers\u2019 expectations for high-speed connectivity continues to be a major challenge for airline operators. \u201cWe\u2019re always going to lag behind what\u2019s going on on the ground, but customers\u2019 expectations don\u2019t lag behind that,\u201d Bamburg said. For that reason, she said, Southwest Airlines is now focusing maximizing speed for its customers to encourage higher take-up rates.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are struggling to keep up with the demands from the customers. People want to have reliable services and connect at the same speeds at home. This is not currently applicable, at least not to our fleet,\u201d Erlingsdottir added. \u201cKeeping up with the high-speed demands\u2026 [is] going to be the most challenging thing for us.\u201d<\/p>\n Air France<\/strong> expects to run into the same issue as it begins the process of connecting its fleet, said Matthieu Dolle, the company\u2019s In-Flight Connectivity (IFC) product manager. By the end of the year, Air France will have just five aircraft connected. And while Dolle said he personally believes in the free business model, the technology currently available simply \u201ccannot offer a good experience\u201d to all customers on all flights at all times. \u201cWe need an improvement of the technology first,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n But even as new, more powerful assets such as Flat Panel Antennas (FPAs) emerge, it will take time for airlines to integrate the hardware into their fleets. \u201cWhen you take an airplane out of service, every day it\u2019s sitting on the ground is a day it\u2019s not making money,\u201d said Bamburg. \u201cIf we know that those planes are going to be retiring, it doesn\u2019t make sense to ground them and not receive the revenues associated with them. Connectivity is an added value and an expectation for our customers, but it\u2019s not worth grounding a plane for multiple days.\u201d<\/p>\n Ultimately, the panelists agreed that while offering adequate connectivity services is important, it is just one of a number of factors that influence how an airline runs its business cost-effectively.<\/p>\n \u201cConnectivity is just piece of the many ancillary products airlines make available,\u201d Bamburg said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe cost of the ticket will ultimately decide who you are flying with,\u201d Erlingsdottir added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" According to panelists at the Global Connected Aircraft Summit, the technology that powers connectivity must still make some strides before most airlines can afford to offer free Wi-Fi services. As guest speakers shared their thoughts on passenger experience on Thursday, they concluded that a business model where customers pay for connectivity will continue to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68087,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68086"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}