In-flight connectivity is no longer a wish, it’s a must-have for commercial aviation, according to Delta Air Lines executive Glenn Latta, managing director of Inflight Entertainment and Connectivity, and Paul Gaske, COO of Hughes Network Systems, an EchoStar company (NASDAQ: SATS). Speaking at SATELLITE 2024 this week, they said passengers expect connectivity to be available in the sky, just like any internet connection on the ground. The show in Washington, D.C. continues through today.
Hughes and Delta Air Lines announced an agreement for in-flight connectivity services in November. Latta said that Delta looks at in-flight connectivity from three dimensions, reports Via Satellite. “There’s the passenger piece, which we must deliver on. And then from an airline perspective, it’s very difficult to do this at 30,000 feet, flying 500 miles an hour pointing at a satellite. If you’re off half a degree, nobody gets internet. So we have to insulate that from the customer to make sure that we can do that and do that well. That requires picking the right technology for today’s internet expectation and predicting what that’s going to look like over time.”
Delta studies network dynamics, according to Latta. “We have a predictive model in collaboration with our partners and we look at average usage on a per aircraft basis. You also have to look at the peak demand,” he said.
A new dynamic for Delta is working with partners like Paramount Plus, where the airline has to look in advance to see how many people are going to take advantage of those partnerships, use that extra bandwidth, and make sure that Delta can meet demand, notes Via Satellite.
Gaske addressed growing demand for broadband on planes. “The broadband space started as kilobits,” Gaske said. “Now it’s many, many megabits in aircraft for passengers. I think the big driver more recently is video. If you go forward, you can just see that’s going to continue as more and more people actually avail themselves of that capability in aircraft. Thinking generationally, younger people tend to want to be more connected,” said Gaske.
Gaske and Latta began discussions about the partnership two years ago during the SATELLITE conference. The two companies had previously worked together on live TV on commercial aircraft, Gaske said. “We provided the video decoders. We’ve had many good partners since then that we support with our broadband technology. We thought we might have just the right assets for what Delta was asking about for these regional jets.”
Regional aircraft today have an air-to-ground system with very limited bandwidth, according to Latta. “So you only get connectivity at altitude, you’re not able to stream or use it like you would a traditional internet at home. We expect this experience in rural aircraft to be just like the experience we offer on our mainline aircraft, in a smaller package to support the constraints of our regional assemblies.”
The SATELLITE 2024 Conference & Exhibition is taking place at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, located at 801 Mt Vernon Pl NW, Washington, D.C. 20001. Register at: www.SATShow.com.
By Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief
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