During the past year, SmartSky Networks completed its ground network, added more supplemental type certificates (STCs) for the installation of airborne hardware, and released the Lite version of its air-to-ground (ATG) connectivity system for smaller aircraft. A Pilatus PC-12 is the smallest aircraft STC’d so far for this system, and more approvals are expected soon for the Lite (one antenna) and Flagship (two antenna) systems.
“We are now at 15 STCs issued, covering 6,286 tails,” said SmartSky president Ryan Stone. “We’ve got another dozen active projects covering another 7,000 tails that should finish soon. There are three or four on their last steps with the FAA and a few more beyond that we’re working on and will announce soon.”
This week at NBAA-BACE, SmartSky is demonstrating its Lite system at static display AD_19 in a customer Citation CJ3+.
“We’re now a nationwide network,” Stone said, “and customers are talking and getting the word out. You can talk to people who have used SmartSky and get their feedback and opinions and see what our customers are experiencing.”
While the PC-12 is the smallest airplane to have a SmartSky Lite system installed, it is also suitable for smaller business jets and those where installing two belly-mounted antennas would be challenging.
For example, a customer purchased a Lite system for a Gulfstream G200 due to the difficulty of installing a second antenna near the jet’s ventral fins. “The upgraded G280 has plenty of room,” he said. “Super midsize and up will be a Flagship system, and anything below that will be the Lite.”
SmartSky's nationwide network is complete, but there are pockets in the upper Midwest and northern Nevada where the company is adding ground towers to get more “densification,” Stone explained. “We want to get a good, consistent experience there.”
There are no problems with network capacity, he added, because SmartSky’s “beamforming” technology was designed to accommodate 100 percent business aviation market penetration, based on the busiest day and hour, which would be about 1,100 aircraft flying and using SmartSky at the same time. “We’re sized to handle that,” he said.
The main difference between the Lite and Flagship systems is the speed at which they send information. Flagship gets up to 20 mbps downloads and five to 10 mbps uploads, while Lite has the same upload speed but about 10 mbps down.
Service plans cost $3,495 per month for a Lite unlimited package, or $995 per month for 10 hours of service and $99 for each additional hour. The Flagship service starts at $3,495 per month for five gigabytes and has various service levels up to the $9,995 per month unlimited flat rate.
SmartSky is adding new dealers, some of which develop STCs on their own. SmartSky has also engineered STCs, but no matter the source of the STC, dealers have to agree to make their SmartSky STCs available (for a license fee) to the dealer network. “It’s competition but coopetition,” Stone said. “We want to make sure [the STCs] are available in our network.”
Meanwhile, SmartSky is promoting its Skytelligence platform, which is enabled by high-speed connectivity. “Once you have connectivity, now it’s what you can do with it,” Stone said.
This translates into sustainability benefits that become available when making dynamic flight plan changes to auto route around weather or making trajectory changes automatically instead of manually. “With a capable network you can do these things, and that really changes the game,” he said.