The Business of Passenger Experience
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.
AirBaltic loves its CSeries jets. The Latvian carrier is set to dramatically grow that fleet. Today’s deal with Bombardier, inked just over one year since the first CS300 arrived in Riga, adds at least 30 more of the type to its fleet.
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.
The newest delivery to Alaska Airlines entered service last week with a special addition on board. Ship N927VA, an A321neo, is now flying throughout the Alaska Airlines network with Gogo’s 2Ku inflight internet service installed. This is the first Alaska Airlines aircraft to operate with the kit.
Following the unexpected transition to a new CEO further management shakeup is hardly unexpected. Gogo took that step this week, announcing three new senior leadership positions in the company.
Is Google poised to launch an inflight internet service? The company is rumored to be looking at a Nokia division to pick up the necessary hardware for such. Scratch beneath the surface, however, and more viable use cases emerge.
Smaller planes need WiFi, too. Upstart SmartSky launched its LiTE platform this week, targeting light jets and props with a flat-rate, unlimited high speed product.
Gogo has a new CEO. In an abrupt move the company announced the replacement of Michael Small with the current largest shareholder, Oakleigh (Oak) Thorne. This should be an interesting few weeks for the company, particularly with a number of trade shows on the near-term horizon.
