2nd March, 2014
Wifi in aircraft, hobbled in the past by slow speeds, could soon take off as new technology enables passengers to surf the web as if they were in a coffee shop, Internet executives say.
More airlines are rolling out new and improved services thanks to satellite technology, industry leaders said at the recent Singapore Airshow, with the public increasingly demanding wifi on planes.
US-based Honeywell Aerospace and Gogo, which supply inflight connectivity systems to airlines, are collaborating with satellite giant Inmarsat to implement the “first global high-speed broadband for the skies” dubbed the Global Xpress (GX) Aviation network.
Briand Greer, president of Honeywell Aerospace Asia Pacific, said inflight wifi could generate $2.8 billion for the company alone over the next 20 years.
He estimates that around seven to eight percent of airlines currently offer wireless connection, but says this number is expected to grow to 25 percent by 2018.
After years of being bogged down by weak demand due to poor signal quality, inflight wifi can now enable download speeds of up to 50 megabits per second, Greer said.
“How we describe it is it will be like you are sitting at Starbucks with your smartphone, your computer and your iPad,” Greer told reporters.
Onboard wifi is not a new idea — European carrier Lufthansa debuted Conexxion by Boeing’s system in 2004.
But by 2006 the company announced its exit after the expected growth in the market did not materialise.
Recent surveys by Airbus and Honeywell, however, suggest that the market might now be ready as passengers increasingly expect airlines to have inflight wireless services.
Airbus published a report in February about the comfort demands of Asian passengers, carried out by global consultancy Future Laboratory.
One of the future trends highlighted was that Asian business passengers would expect wifi enabled cabins with telephone and conference calling facilities.
Honeywell also conducted a survey of 3,000 passengers from the United States, Britain and Singapore and nearly 90 percent would give up an amenity, such as drinks or a better seat, for a faster and more consistent wireless connection.
When flying over land, planes use telecommunication towers to transmit Internet signals but during long-haul flights, when they fly over large expanses of water, consistent connectivity becomes a problem.
In those cases, a satellite network is needed.
In December last year, Inmarsat launched the first of three satellites that will serve the GX network. Air China will be the first airline to test it, on its A330 fleet in the second quarter of 2015.
Singapore Airlines, which launched its $50 million inflight connectivity programme in September 2012, said it planned to finish equipping its aircraft with the hardware by 2015.
A Lufthansa spokesman said that it would also begin rolling out inflight wifi on all of its planes in the middle of this year.