Story ID: 618
Honeywell Adding Iridium Certus Connectivity
By: Matt Thurber
Caption: The new Iridium Certus satcom from Honeywell offers higher-speed airborne connectivity with lower hardware and airtime costs.
Word Count: 197
In early 2020, Honeywell will begin delivering new Aspire 150 satcom terminals and antennas for business jet customers to access the Iridium Certus satellite network. The Certus network will allow data speeds of up to 700 kbps, allowing flight deck and cabin connectivity for accessing the internet, flight-plan filing and updating, downloading graphical weather information, video chatting, and emailing with attachments.

The Certus airborne hardware will be “the easiest broadband system to install,” according to Honeywell, and the system weighs less and uses smaller antennas than earlier systems. An available standard service plan offers the potential to lower airtime costs “as much as 50 percent per megabyte compared with alternative satcom solutions,” the company said.

In other news, Honeywell announced that it is expanding the availability of Sky Connect services, with a new push-to-talk service that facilitates beyond-line-of-sight communications. The new service is available for operators that use the Tracker 3A Iridium satcom. Another service that Honeywell is offering is more flight data monitoring capability for meeting mandates for collection and observation of data, the company explained. The Tracker 3A system can offload collected data on the cellular network via an available new cellular radio.