Story ID: 030
Roundtable: The Rapid Evolution of In-flight Connectivity
By: Matt Thurber
Caption: In-flight connectivity has become a must-have with multiple heavy data users on board
Word Count: 2203
In-flight connectivity is a rapidly evolving field where connectivity is a must-have, not a nice-to-have. Once, passengers were hoping for the ability to text, and now they want offices in the sky. Reliability and speed have become commonplace, rather than a target. AIN brought together experts to discuss how the industry is meeting the demands of these changes and what to expect in the future. 
Participating in the roundtable were Claudio D’Amico, v-p of strategic market engagement, Business Aviation for Viasat; Jay Heublein, president of Flexjet Technical Services; Jason Wissink, president of services and connectivity for Honeywell; and, Michael Schrage, research fellow, MIT Sloan School of Management. Viasat sponsored this roundtable.
On the Business Aviation In-flight Connectivity Landscape
Claudio D’Amico
There’s definitely a change in our industry. We went from being able to send a text on an airplane, and that was good enough 20 years ago, to using that aircraft as an extension of our office or living room. That’s the expectation when you’re flying on these business jets, but at the same time, the technology of the aircraft has improved significantly. We have airplanes flying longer distances, and I think that also has a big impact on connectivity for our industry. [New] jets are equipped with connectivity as a must-have solution
There’s consolidation happening [with providers]. It happens in every industry that is maturing. You have innovators, then some consolidation, and we’re seeing some of that.
The demographics of our passengers are changing. At one point, speeds were very important. But now, with this maturing in the industry, we’re seeing experiences being more important. That’s how the whole customer base is evolving.
Obviously, we’re seeing LEO [low-earth-orbit] entrants. From Viasat’s perspective, competition is good. It forces us to continue to innovate and bring better solutions to our customer base. We think that a multi-orbit solution backed by high-capacity and flexible satellites is where you can continue to innovate and drive improvements in terms of experience. 
 
Jason Wissink
 
A combination of multiple are expanding the choices that operators have. The established providers like Viasat are adding significant amounts of capacity. We have to stay very close with companies like Viasat to understand those roadmaps, timing, modems, waveforms, all that stuff, so that when the capacity becomes available, people can get access to it right away.
On top of that, there are a lot of new entrants and disruptors. Starlink is one of them, and they’re driving a change into the market, in terms of what experience should be expected. As a manufacturer, we have a combination of people that we’re partnered with, and then some folks are more vertically integrated that we still need to find a way to work with, because you end up with aircraft that have multiple systems installed. What passengers want is a system that works great and provides a great experience.
 
Michael Schrage
Let’s not confuse greater capacity with capability and how that capability is experienced. The user doesn’t want to deal with complexity. They just want the thing to work. 
What I think is going to become very important in the business space and in the commercial space is classic UX [user experience] design— what are the personae of the users, and what are the edge cases that will test the capability of the system? If you’ve got the children of [the owners] on a jet, and they are influencers on Twitch, how well can they do stuff on Twitch as opposed to just stream a Netflix movie? What kind of latencies are acceptable? 
These are the big issues. I think metadata matters. I think the intent of the user matters.  I think there’s going to be more intelligence in the system, and capacity is not just going to be about speed or greater speeds; it’s going to be about facilitating intelligent continuity for the user.
 
Jay Heublein
.[Last] Sunday, we had 380 live legs. The only negative KPIs that I saw, somebody had bad catering on one flight, and on three flights that had legacy connectivity equipment, they complained that the connectivity didn’t work. Think about how complicated it is to run [those] flights. We can run a perfect flight, and now we’re down to people are focused on whether or not their in-flight connectivity experience mirrored what they expect in their office or in their homes. The expectation is that anything I can do in my home, in my office, I should be able to do in my aircraft.
The early generation stuff was great. We were all happy when we could do basic text and then, almost immediately, “I can’t stream. I can’t host video conferencing.” If you have a less-than-perfect connectivity experience, our customers think of the flight as a failure.
We realized two to three years ago that [Starlink] going to be able to build a phased-array antenna [or ESA]. We thought that was a big step forward, because we got away from moving parts. So we decided to go all-in on Starlink. We’re an integrator for Starlink. I think [we’ve developed] about 20 STCs [supplemental type certificates], and in a year, we delivered almost 800 kits.
 In the last couple of years, we’ve crossed the reliability threshold. In the 110, 120 airplanes that I have flying with Starlink, I’m aware of two mechanical issues, which, relatively speaking, is incredibly low.
 
On Customer Expectations 
 
Claudio D’Amico
Customers have mentioned they liked the consistency and the reliability as our network grew. As we further integrate Viasat and Inmarsat, we can bring a lot more to our customers. And as we evolve equipment, in collaboration with our partners, we can also bring even more capacity.
 
Jay Heublein
My issue is I can’t move fast enough to [upgrade]. To be clear, we’re not talking about Honeywell systems. We’re talking about older ATG-type technology, where the experience is nowhere near the same as that is available now. It’s a race for us to get them on. We started with all of our large-cabin aircraft. We got through those fairly quickly. Next week, we’ll start our last STC, which is for our light jets. It’s coming.
 
Jason Wissink
The existing JetWave customers have certainly begun to experience the increased capacity over North America. We’re seeing peak speeds increase quite substantially and usage going up. The reception on our newer system that we’re just finishing up—JetWave X, we bring that into the service at the end of this year—people appreciate the flexibility we built into the system. 
[JetWave X] over-the-air testing has begun, and we’ve got it on one of our test aircraft. We’ll be flying that here very shortly. Things are starting to move here pretty quickly. And now we’re getting into much deeper discussions with the service centers on STCs and production fit.
 
On Connectivity Improvements and Costs
Jay Heublein
Our large-cabin data subscription rates are probably half what they were five years ago. That’s because there are multiple solutions and not just because we have a LEO solution. But there has been a reduction in data costs.
Claudio D’Amico
I think there has been. It’s about which service plan you’re selecting and how you want to operate the aircraft. One of the things that we’re focused on is how do we measure that experience, so we can quantify that experience going forward. We see speed tests on our network of over 150 megabits per second. We don’t talk about that because we want to make sure that we’re consistently delivering that experience.
 
Jason Wissink
An interesting challenge that owners and operators have today is the challenge of choice. Choice is a good thing. When you bring new entrants into a market competition, the customer typically benefits. I think you’re seeing that in in-flight connectivity, but because in the world of equipping aircraft, switching costs are really high. It’s not like choosing between AT&T and Verizon. It’s like, I have to put the airplane down. I have to do wiring, all that stuff. So making the wrong choice can be a struggle.
People are asking a lot of questions today just to try to understand, “I get what I could put on my airplane right now. What do you think it looks like in three years…in five years?” Flexibility, integration, and simplicity are the things that we think are going to be important to give people a great experience. 
 
On the Future of In-Flight Connectivity
 
Jason Wissink
There will be more networks. I think the current providers will continue to expand capacity. Business aviation isn’t a huge industry but it’s a very demanding industry. The industry has already consolidated pretty significantly. This is a market that we remain extremely passionate about. Satellite connectivity continues to be an area that we’ll continue to invest heavily in, and our goal is to make sure we’re keeping up with the rate of change.
 
Jay Heublein
We’re talking a lot about consumer experience with connectivity right now, but safety-sensitive connectivity [is important], and [also] those types of things that are going to drive the future of avionics. Why do I have to have two platforms to do that? When you think about things that are going to evolve, I think that’s going to see more and more evolution [to a single connectivity system for the whole airplane]. I think eventually we’d like to get away from [separate systems]. Reliable connectivity is reliable connectivity, but there’s a lot of room to continue to evolve different aspects of it.
Claudio D’Amico
What customers have liked about what we’ve offered was initially the consistency, the reliability of the equipment, and the performance. We’re going to continue to expand that. One thing that is going to be a key differentiator in this market, to be able to serve the requirements of our customers, is the support side. There’s an expectation for heightened support.
.You will have a market that is growing, but at the same time consolidating in terms of who’s delivering service. Success will come from those who are close to the ecosystem, who are developing solutions that meet the customer’s expectations in a simple, frictionless way, and at the same time, you have the whole ecosystem behind it to support it. Whoever can deliver on all those things at the same time will have a place here.
Michael Schrage 
.What I’m hearing is that the indifference curve between software versus hardware is going to become more important. If Jay can buy another year of delay by doing firmware or software upgrades with the equipment, that’s probably worth a lot to him in terms of scheduling maintenance, replacement, et cetera. One of the outstanding questions is, where is software not just a good substitute but a better substitute than the core hardware in this regard? 
In terms of customer experience, I think more intelligent allocation of resources is going to be a really interesting challenge and opportunity.
 
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