The Business of Passenger Experience
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.
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.
Thales is the latest IFE/C vendor to partner with Chinese conglomerate HNA Group to deliver entertainment and connectivity services on board. But will they really fly? Concerns about the financial stability of HNA raise significant concerns about the long-term viability of the offerings.
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.
JetBlue's A320 fleet upgrade will be a little different than initially announced, mostly in a good way. Newer entertainment and connectivity solutions are now (officially) part of the plan.
