PaxEx Update: 19 July 2019

Welcome to PaxEx Update, bringing you the top airline passenger experience headlines for the week ending July 19, 2019.

First up is United Airlines releasing some details about seating changes. The 787-8 and –9 models will see the new Polaris business class seats and Premium Plus premium economy seats installed in the coming years. In both cases, however, the Economy Plus cabins will shrink dramatically, while the –8 also loses some business class seats. Win some, lose some.

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United also says it wants to make inflight wifi free to passengers, once it solves its reliability and performance challenges. The carrier joins Delta in pushing such plans.

The first A220 headed to EgyptAir Express rolled out of the paint shop recently and it looks great wearing the Horus logo. That it has an inflight connectivity radome on top is also a very, nice sight to see.

Inmarsat issued an update this week on its EAN deployment. The program is still in “soft-launch” mode with British Airways and Iberia. Some 30,000 passengers daily have access to the service on a variety of routes, though no details on take rates, installed aircraft count or when it will transition to production mode were disclosed.

Upstart LEO operator OneWeb revealed test results from its first satellites, delivering 400Mbps performance in the lab. Still a ways to go for getting the initial constellation of 650 satellites into service, but the company is moving forward.

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Finally, Boeing announced a $4.9 billion charge against the 737 MAX grounding, along with an increased production cost of $1.7 billion, adding to the $1 billion it previously disclosed. All told, each frame in the current backlog will be nearly one million dollars less profitable to the company based on these numbers, and we still have no idea when it will fly again.

You can keep up with these stories and more all week long at PaxEx.Aero. Have a great trip!