In early October, Gogo Business Aviation announced a new premium membership program called SmartShield that offers exclusive protections and benefits for anyone with a Gogo inflight connectivity system.
SmartShield lets current customers with an AVANCE L3 or L5 system, or even those with one of the older “classic ATG” systems, such as the ATG 2000, 4000 or 5000, take advantage of those benefits and protections.
“The value of SmartShield demonstrates our commitment to customers,” said Dave Glenn, senior vice president of customer operations for Gogo. “Our customers told us they wanted to protect their inflight connectivity investment, and with SmartShield they receive warranty protection for their equipment for as long as they are in the program. They also said they wanted protection against overage costs and have the ability to rollover unused megabytes of data to the following month.”
For $5,000 per year plus a three-year service commitment, SmartShield provides three distinct and comprehensive benefits: control, protection and savings.
Control
- Fixed service pricing
- Monthly rollover of unused megabytes of data
- Annual overage forgiveness
Protection
- Full perpetual warranty
- Expedited shipping
Savings
- 50% discount on services from field service engineers
- Free annual online training
- Gogo Vision 360 discount
For Gogo customers who are using a classic ATG system and want to begin using an AVANCE system, SmartShield is the most cost-effective upgrade path. Gogo is offering a $10,000 installation rebate and a $15,000 service credit toward a Gogo Biz 4G data plan. And an additional benefit: the $15,000 credit can be combined with existing promotions.
“That’s a hefty rebate and credit for customers who are looking to upgrade to AVANCE,” Glenn added. “The AVANCE L5 is delivering a robust experience today, but it’s also the easiest path to Gogo 5G, which we recently said we expect will deliver ~25 Mbps on average with peak speeds in the 75-80 Mbps range. It will be a dramatic increase from what customers are receiving today.”
Additionally, Gogo 5G will be increasingly important as growth in demand for data on flights continues to grow. On its third-quarter earnings call in early November, Gogo said it is seeing a 78% increase in megabytes consumed per day and a 44% increase in megabytes per flight as compared to pre-Covid levels in the third quarter of 2019.
“Our 5G network deployment is underway, and we remain on schedule for launch in the second half of 2022,” commented Glenn. “On top of that, we’re well into system qualification and certification, and we’re developing a comprehensive Supplemental Type Certification (STC) portfolio with Duncan Aviation and others.”