The Business of Passenger Experience
Major drama in the inflght connectivity world this afternoon as joint venture partners Eutelsat and Viasat are splitting on a major project. Eutelsat is launching KONNECT, its own massive increase in Ka-band capacity in 2021 and has new partners to work with on that deal. Oh, and it is bailing on its potential partnership for the ViaSat-3's EMEA coverage.
There's arguably no better way to assuage investors after roporting significant losses for 2017 than to report multiple new orders to start 2018. For Global Eagle the balance is a tough one, but the 300+ new planes added to the connectivity backlog is a nice bit of news for incoming CEO Josh Marks to announce.
How much revenue does the American Airlines fleet contribute to Gogo? What will things look like in 2018 as 400ish planes leave? Here's a look at what I think might happen.
What good is having an inflight wifi connectivity product if no one is using it? Gogo sits flush with satellite capacity and is pushing to increase take rates (and revenue) up dramatically on its platform.
Aeromexico's first 737 MAX rolled off the assembly line at Renton last week and all indications are that, unlike the company's 737-800s, it will not be flying with the Gogo 2Ku solution.
Calling it a next generation network may be a slight stretch but Panasonic Avionics is making some changes to how it delivers inflight connectivity. Adding bandwidth is the (relatively) easy part. Blocking the updates no one needs on a plane is harder but also a potentially more significnat improvement to the passenger experience.
Air Canada's 737 MAX fleet is getting inflight connectivity but it might not be what was expected. The first radome installation is complete and it looks like a new vendor may be in play, with Thales breaking in to Gogo territory.
Inmarsat's hybrid EAN service is on track for entry to service in 2018. Could it have a new airline customer to come along with that launch? Signs point to an interesting opportunity within the Lufthansa Group of airlines.
Delta is bringing more Gogo 2Ku wifi installation work in-house, a move that saves some cash and delivers other benefits for the airline.
JetBlue is tweaking its inflight connectivity plans, securing its relationship with ViaSat while pushing Thales out as an integrator. That's mostly good news, unless you're Thales.
