The Business of Passenger Experience
Gogo plans significant cost cuts as it seeks to shore up its financial position. Facing a financing crunch the company's "Gogo 2020" business plan unveiled this week will see hundreds of millions of dollars cut from cost side of the balance sheet as jobs and programs are dropped from the company.
The launch of inflight wifi connectivity on Spirit Airlines presents many questions about the business model associated with that deal. Earlier this month, on the sidelines of the IATA Annual General Meeting in Sydney, Dominique Giannoni, CEO of Thales InFlyt, spoke about the arrangement and why just focusing on the contract terms doesn't really answer the bigger questions around how the service will operate and prove profitable to both parties.
Partners are important. But Viasat is not deterred by its lack of partners when it comes to developing the global ViaSat-3 constellation of Ka-band satellite connectivity. Indeed, the wait while searching for a partner on one of the satellites may prove beneficial when it finally launches.
When senior airline executives are willing to trash their vendors in public that's usually bad news for everyone involved. Welcome to the inflight connectivity world, where airlines are almost as unhappy as the passengers struggling to stay online in the sky. Alas, only part of that frustration is grounded in reality.
As Alaska Airilnes shifts its aircraft to Gogo's 2Ku offering passengers will see increased bandwidth, hopefully driving an increase in the number online. But a change in the way the product is priced could throw a wrench in those plans.
Spirit Airlines will add inflight wifi as it seeks to improve the onboard passenger experience. The carrier's full fleet will carry Thales FlytLIVE hardware by the end of Summer 2019.
Sticky 2Ku antennae will cost Gogo north of $25mm to repair or replace, and that's not the only challenge new CEO Oak Thorne faced as he presented his first quarterly earnings call for the inflight connectivity provider.
A spike in aviation-related revenue is good news for Inmarsat but not all revenue is created equally. There's more to this story than just the raw numbers.
A decade of bribery and illicit payments came to an abrupt end a couple years ago. Now Panasonic Avionics is looking to move on. The company settled its case with the US Department of Justice and SEC, paying massive fines but avoiding further issues.
Commercial success in the inflight connectivity business is anything but easy. That isn't stopping newcomers from trying. Saudi Arabia's Taqnia Space group launched the UON offering earlier this month and it has potential. But like other offerings in the market there are questions about how well it can scale up to meet demand (both bandwidth and profits).
