Archive

Tag Archives: ARINC Direct

in-flight wifi

In-Flight WiFi

According to many airlines, in-flight WiFi provision gives them a ‘competitive advantage’ in the commercial aviation industry.

As the competition grows fiercer, it seems that in-flight wi-fi will become less of an advantage and more of a normality according to a report by ‘routehappy.com,’ a site that ranks airlines.  Their report says that currently 38% of US flights offer internet connectivity and long haul or the most popular routes, such as non-connecting California-New York are offering in-flight WiFi.

Although it is still a small percentage of flights overall, it shows that, as passenger demands for in-flight WiFi grows, the more likely that it will become standard practice and airlines will be looking to offer faster, better and cheaper in-flight WiFi to remain competitive.

The debate grows after the FAA’s announcement last week that it will be lightening up about the use of electronic devices on-board, allowing passengers on certain flights to carry on using their Smartphones instead of the insistence of powering down before take off.

Most airlines provide ‘GoGo’ for in-flight WiFi, but with dramatic price fluctuations and intermittent signal, the marketplace is broadening and the opening into business aviation for passengers wishing to work in the sky and on the move means that a push into the Ku-band for international connectivity is the way forward.

Aircraft in-flight Wifi provider, ARINC, already offer truly global connectivity with their Inmarsat/iridium satellite network connectivity and are leaders in the business of aviation communications.

Gogo expects that in-flight wifi for business travellers will become a required expense and not an optional one and are experimenting on new pricing models as it is still early days for in-flight wifi connectivity.

Only time will tell…

Analysts from Research & Markets have forecast that despite increased operating costs, the Business Jet Global market should grow at an average annual rate of 9.4% over the four-year range of 2012-2016, in their new report ‘Global Business Jet Market 2012-2016’.

They attribute the market growth to a couple of factors including the rise in the number of global billionaires and an increasing demand from the emergence of certain economies, however there are concerns that increased operating costs could challenge this growth.

It is noted that in 2012, 28% of growth was attributed to emerging economies and could rise to 40% by 2030.

Companies such as Bombardier Inc, Dessault Aviation and Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. may dominate the market, with other vendors mentioned being; Airbus SAS, Embraer, The Boeing co and Hawker Beechcraft will all benefit from the growing order backlogs as growth is propelled by the major owner-operator segment of the market – billionaires.

This week it has been announced that a pilot has written an iPad app that will handle the commuter and on-demand flight ops calculations, such as departure gradients, approach planning, flight time tracking and climb performance, to name a few.

The new app for the iPad, called the ‘Aviation Pilot Duty and Performance Calculator’ is the latest in a line of innovations introduced since the iPad impact on the cockpit began saving the Pilot hours of complicated, intricate work involving reams of paper that would have to be carried.

The iPad has been a major contribution to the paperless flight deck and with the many apps on the market, such as the ARINC Direct iPad Flight Planning App, especially designed and developed for business aviation users, the Pilot and flight ops crew can look forward to a truly streamlined, optimized cockpit.

iPad flight planning app

ARINC Direct Flight Planning iPad App

ARINC Direct Flight Planning iPad App

ARINC Direct, industry leading business aviation communications providers, demonstrated their new Flight Planning iPad app at EBACE last month, showing the incredible capabilities and connectivity for the use of the iPad as a valuable flight planning tool.

James Hardie, Director for ARINC Direct EMEA and Asia Pacific, said, “Once we realized that more than 50 percent of our subscriber base was already using the [Apple] iPad as an electronic flight bag in the cockpit, we knew that we could provide more up-to-date information, automatically, through our own app, whenever it is connected via the Internet to our servers.”

The combination of the WiFi connectivity of the iPad and ARINC Direct’s Inmarsat SwiftBroadband link, allow for the flight planning iPad app to achieve maximum capability, enhancing the flight deck operations, cutting down the paperwork and offering live weather graphics, graphical flight following and much more.

ARINC Direct’s unique features, such as the ability to connect two iPads via Bluetooth on the flight deck, enabling data sharing, and amending, saving and uploading amended flight plans as PDF’s make the ARINC Direct flight planning iPad app a much needed and long awaited solution to utmost efficiency and another huge step towards a paperless cockpit.

Last week in Geneva at EBACE, business aviation specialists, ARINC Direct took a step closer to a paperless cockpit with their latest innovation, Xplore, a new communications service, offering a four-in-one portable device – ACARS messaging, high-quality voice service, Blackberry email and SMS/Instant Messaging capable.

Xplore will use an iPad application for the user interface and will be user-friendly, adding the benefit of sychnronicity between two or more iPads with bluetooth technology.

ARINC Direct existing business jet-operating customers will notice that the ACARS functionality is completely interoperable with their ARINC Direct account.

“The system is so flexible and easy to use we are looking at a wider range of applications than just business jets for its use,” said ARINC director James Hardie.

ARINC Direct Xplore, using the Inmarsat and Iriudium satellite networks will enable global connectivity for the flight deck and passengers in a simple, single application.

Mr Hardie continued, “If pilots are equipped with SwiftBroadband and they use the iPad App, then they are benefitting from a dynamic aviation information platform which surpasses traditional methods of getting in flight data.”

ARINC Direct encouraged pre-ordering of their business jet innovation at EBACE and hope to complete certification to launch the live product later this year.

Xplore ACARS

ARINC Direct Xplore – ACARS

According to experts in Asia, the growth in the business aviation industry and other sectors spells great news for the economies of those countries, but improvements are needed in both infrastructure and regulatory systems to sustain that growth and improvement.

The regional differences are as much to blame in China, for example, the huge costs involved with private and business passenger processing are unrealistic and described as ‘outrageous’ by Chris Buchholz, Hong Kong’s Metrojet Executive Director.

Mr Buchholz said, “Governments outside China must do much more to unlock this market.”

Lead times can be wearing, as military governed airspace in China can encounter permit delays of as many as seven days to process,  and flexibility is almost non-existent, due to the strict insistence of fixed flight planning in advance – this, of course, is not much use to business and private jet aviation.

Similar problems are encountered all over Asia, with India’s infrastructure described as “Woefully inadequate” by the President of the Business Aviation Association for India (BAAI), Karan Singh, who commented, “There’s limited parking, and the airlines always get priority, especially at Bombay and Delhi. Ground handling is provided by state-owned companies that have been known to charge $1,500 for a bus to transfer passengers from the ramp to the terminal.”

On a more positive note, there are signs of the rigidity of these attitudes changing, as more Asian Companies take the step of using business and private jet travel, raising awareness of the need for greater infrastructure in this sector.

“The mindset is changing now that Indian companies regard business jets as tools, rather than toys,” Singh noted.

There is a long way to go yet, as tax implications for jet purchasers is still high, and, while Asia moves towards business aviation, and the expectation for growth is encouraging, there are still hurdles to jump, not only in terms of infrastructure and regulation, but also in attitude.

Leslie Merszei, managing director of Orient Sky, a Bangkok-based broker said, “There are too many clients and too little inventory. Most business jets in the region are not available for charter,” adding that according to many Asian beliefs, outsiders can bring ‘bad luck’ if they charter their aircraft.

Orient Sky do not share this belief, with their plans to market around a dozen business jet aircraft later this year.

Although Asian business aviation is far from the models presented by Europe and the US, experts predict the fast-growing industry could double, due to the rise in corporate and indeed person wealth increases continent-wide.

It has been recently discussed that passenger data, if utilized and analyzed properly, could improve profitability for the airline industry.

Of course, this is a highly debatable subject in some sectors, due to concerns over security and data-sharing, not just passenger data, but all kind of data ranging throughout global industry.

However, passenger data is already accessed via a ‘cloud’ by government and security agencies and is carefully tagged to ensure the passenger data or any other information does not fall into ‘other’ hands.

The implementation of a ‘Data Lake’ could be the answer, enabling secure access to passenger data and related data that could be used by authorized analysts to weigh up the global aviation industry possibilities for improvement and increased profitability.

So, What is a ‘Data Lake’ & How Could it Affect Passenger Data?

A ‘Data Lake’ is basically a common storage pool with each piece of data being tagged with appropriate security information.  This will, through the use of metatags, control who is able to access the information, be it passenger data for an airline or fuel prices, for example.  The security information will stay with the data, tagging it in with certain criteria for analytical value.

The idea will place analytical information within fast and easy, but above all, secure and controlled reach of analysts, with those security tags firmly in place!

ARINC Cabin ConnectA new Ka-Band delivered high-speed broadband service was on display for the first time for visitors to the Hamburg Aircraft Interiors Expo last week.  GX Aviation, launched by Inmarsat, will be supported by new avionics developed by Honeywell and will be commercially available in early 2015.

Jack Jacobs, Vice President of Marketing Product and Management, Honeywell Aerospace said: “The consumer demand for fast, global in-flight connectivity continues to grow at a monumental rate. People want to be connected no matter where they are and have the same Internet experience that they have at home.”

The world-leading satellite communications company, Inmarsat, plans to change the face of in-flight connectivity with GX Aviation, designed to provide throughputs of up to 50Mbps with uninterrupted global broadband coverage, offering like-for-like, ground-based comparative connectivity.

“The world is changing and airlines are seeking to keep up with passengers’ expectations. Our new GX service, which can be combined with our existing L-band solution, enables airlines to capitalise on already installed hardware to provide high speed broadband service with complete geographical coverage for all aircraft requirements, both in the cockpit and the cabin,” says Inmarsat’s Miranda Mills, Vice President of Aerospace.

The in-flight wifi debate continued last week as service providers all have a different approach to bandwidth.

Bill Sullivan, Director for Strategy and Business Development at ViaSat, commented, “People value speed, whether at home or in mobile environment. We have built a system around a very high speed experience. So we are taking that and bringing it into the airline sector.”

However, not everyone agrees that speed is the answer, especially when in-flight wifi provision is so expensive.  Row 44’s John Guidon argues,

“Just talking about speed is not satisfactory. It doesn’t explain the totality of the experience,” adding, “Really people are most interested in, in my opinion, page load time.”

There is no doubt that connectivity for in-flight wifi is in demand.  It is not a question of whether aircraft need it; it is now an account of which service to choose.  Ka-band wifi will provide speeds of at least 12Mbps per passenger, with even faster speeds being achieved with Ku-band or satellite in-flight wifi operations.

Most airlines recognise passengers’ growing demands for in-flight wifi and with the buzz created by the different broadband connectivity providers, the market is exploding.

This month we have heard another story of airline struggling to deal with costs. Chanchangi airline has said that high cost of aviation fuel in Nigeria is a huge setback for domestic airline operations.

Airlines now have to look at every aspect of their business in order to balance the books. There are lots of areas that you can make cut backs but using route optimisation as a part of flight planning is one, and getting a good deal on aviation messaging is another.

But even with these basics in place fuel remains crippling. Using a contract fuel supplier will help – but this year at the Avalon air show Australia showcased aviation biofuels as the roadmap for the future. More on that story later…

Australian aviation biofuels showcased at Avalon

Australian aviation biofuels showcased at Avalon – picture courtesy of ABC