The Business of Passenger Experience
Commercial success in the inflight connectivity business is anything but easy. That isn't stopping newcomers from trying. Saudi Arabia's Taqnia Space group launched the UON offering earlier this month and it has potential. But like other offerings in the market there are questions about how well it can scale up to meet demand (both bandwidth and profits).
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.
Qatar Airways is the latest airline to bring gate-to-gate connectivity online. Regulatory changes are now approved allowing the service to operate. The next couple years of growing passenger demand with minimal spare capacity should be interesting to watch play out.
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.
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.
European charter specialist Hi Fly really is going to operate the A380. The company confirmed today that it will have the 471-seat aircraft in its fleet by mid-year. And it should be a pretty nice ride, too.
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.
After taking nearly a year to unwind the complexity of its financials following a string of acquisitions Global Eagle is finally ready to move forward on executing its plan. Leadership and funding changes announced this week are a major step forward on that front.
Airline passengers in China and across Asia will soon have access to significantly more inflight wifi connectivity bandwith. Panasonic Avionics and APSATCOM announced the first “XTS” ultra-high speed Ku-band satellte, set to launch in early 2019.
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.
