Passengers flying across the Pacific Ocean are set for a major upgrade in inflight connectivity performance. Panasonic Avionics and Eutelsat announced this week that Eutelsat 172b is now in service, delivering a massive increase in…
Spirit commits to inflight wifi
The tease of inflight wifi connectivity from Spirit Airlines finally is fulfilled. The carrier announced today it will fit its entire fleet with Ka-band satellite-based connectivity in partnership with Thales FlytLIVE. The first aircraft installs…
Eutelsat goes big on Ka-band, dumps ViaSat-3
Eutelsat is investing big in Ka-band capacity over Europe. The satellite operator announced KONNECT VHTS today, a 500 gigabit/second satellite to be built by Thales Alenia Space and which is expected to enter service in…
Thales, HNA Group deal, but will it really…
A couple dozen more Chinese wide-body aircraft are set to receive the Thales AVANT IFE system and high-speed inflight internet systems. HNA Group and Thales recently announced that a mix of 42 A330s and 17…
ViaSat, JetBlue tighten ties, push Thales out on…
Late last week we were able to report that JetBlue would be updating its Airbus fleet to support the ViaSat-2 satellite with on board hardware upgrades. This week, as part of ViaSat's quarterly earnings report,…
JetBlue confirms AVANT, ViaSat-2 for A320 retrofits
Chalk up another customer for the ViaSat-2 network. JetBlue confirmed upgrades for all of its Airbus aircraft in a recent internal company memo. Those upgrades allow the planes to talk to the new satellite. The…