Recently in Regulatory Category

Portable in-flight entertainment (IFE) maker digEcor last week received the equivalent of a tongue lashing from a Utah district court.

The court dismissed with prejudice (i.e. permanently) all of digEcor's remaining claims against competitor - and former partner - e.Digital, and ordered that digEcor recover no damages or injunctive relief. But it also took some digEcor executives to task for their testimony.

In issuing its ruling, the court found:

...e.Digital's witnesses to be credible, while some witnesses offered by digEcor lacked credibility under the above criteria. Specifically, digEcor's president,
Brent Wood, offered self-serving testimony at trial that was often contradicted by his own past testimony or with his own private statements in the contemporaneous communications offered in evidence. At one point during the trial, Mr. Wood stated that his sworn testimony on a crucial issue (which did not align with digEcor's litigation position), given in the 30(b)(6) deposition of digEcor, was false. Further, while the court found digEcor vice president Chris Wood to be generally credible, documents introduced at trial demonstrate that he was less than candid with e.Digital about the purpose of the inspection performed by digEcor and the extent of the information digEcor learned.

The court says it incorporated these credibility determinations in reaching its findings.

I've written a news article about the ruling and posted it to the new IFE&C channel. But below you'll find the key quotes from e.Digital and digEcor. Note that they are both looking forward to the World Airline Entertainment Association conference and exhibition in Palm Springs next month. Guess what? So are we!  I'm envisioning a peace circle and a little Cat Stevens. What say you?

Robert Putnam, e.Digital senior vice-president, says: "We are pleased with the court's rulings and look forward to next month's World Airline Entertainment Association (WAEA) conference and exhibition, where we'll be meeting with current and prospective eVU portable IFE customers."

Brent Wood, CEO of digEcor, says: "Are we disappointed with the outcome? Sure. However, the suit was necessary to force e.Digital to perform on its last production contract with digEcor. The failure to prevail on some damages claims for late delivery doesn't change anything. It is almost moot. Who we are and what we do is no different today than yesterday. We continue to partner with airlines to find innovative solutions to IFE. We continue to develop programs that bring revenue to airlines enabling them to put high-quality entertainment and flexible devices in front of passengers.

"In fact, we invite everyone to come visit our booth at the WAEA show in a few weeks as we will be making several big announcements that will help propel digEcor and the IFE industry forward."

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 appropriated $7.2 billion and directed the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Commerce to expand broadband access to unserved and underserved communities across the USA to "increase jobs, spur investments in technology and infrastructure and provide long-term economic benefits".

The result is the RUS Broadband Inititiatves Programme (BIP) and the NTIA Broadband Technology Opportunities Programme (BTOP).

According to the government's "Broadband USA" portal, Aircell is applying for over $65 million to "improve public safety and consumer access to in-flight Internet service in the largely unserved US airspace" via its air-to-ground broadband network. Here's a screen grab from the site. 

Well now, that's an interesting interpretation of "unserved" community. I wonder if Row 44 will also apply (Hughes has submitted a few apps but I can't see anything about in-flight broadband).

Thanks @broadbandtrends on Twitter for the info!

My recent blog about Design Q's preliminary concept for 'troop-type' seating has generated a lot of interest thanks in no small part to Fox News, which asked in a recent article: "Will Sideways Seating Be Future of Air Travel?"

But while some military folks saw sideways seating as 'no big deal', others were aghast at the mere mention of it and got their knickers well and truly knotted up over the whole business.

Yes, there are MANY safety and regulatory issues to consider. But of all aviation industry stakeholders, shouldn't designers be the ones to at least explore different aircraft interiors?

Why are we so afraid to think outside the box for inside the tube?

As the Aircraft Interiors Expo picks up steam in Hong Kong, I've asked Dr. Indi Rajasingham, inventor of the Air Sleeper, to write a guest blog about why Asia may be the launching ground for some of the more radical ideas out there, including his own seemingly radical concept - lie-flat sleeper seats for economy class. Here is Indi in his own words.

Asia's Business Travel Market  - The approaching market Tsunami
Ride it with new cabin technologies to wild success or drown with the old technologies
Indi Rajasingham, chairman MMILLENNIUMM GROUP

The sharp drops in the business travel market as the recession bites is a major concern, particularly in Asia where the falls in demand have been near catastrophic. Even the best performing airlines both in the region and worldwide have seen huge demand drop particularly in the top end of the market in first and business class. This compounded with the demand drop off in the cargo market as the recession advances has contributed to a very challenging time for airlines in the region.

There is of course no question that the recession has been the principal factor in the demand drop off. However the precipitous Asian business class drop off is an interesting manifestation of a fundamental shift in the commercial aviation market structure in the last decade.

Conventional wisdom is that business travel is a monolithic market segment. However while this was perhaps true till the 1980s, global economics has change this market fundamentally.

The rise in demand for business travel by businesses in the Asian region has fundamentally different economics to the industrialized countries. While potential demand in the Asian market, if enabled, is huge and growing, the market is not as price elastic as the business travel market in industrialized countries. 

The upshot of this is that business travel for enabling global business is a much larger part of the cost of doing business in Asian and other developing economies and therefore, as profitability falls, the critical price point at which business travel gets cut is much lower than in industrialized countries. Travel is then only for mission critical needs and excludes much of the discretionary travel.

This fundamental factor is bourn out in the recent precipitous collapse of the business class market in the Asian region as profitability in global business suffered from the recession. The critical price point for these markets was lower than the market offerings by the airlines.

Therefore airlines need to hone in on the critical price points and critical human factors for this huge and emerging business market. Most importantly offer these combinations at profitable operating costs. This will become even more critical as fuel prices begin to escalate.

The key factors for defining this as a sustainable market are:

• Define price points that are acceptable in this relatively inelastic market.

• Define human factors for this market - to effectively enable the business processes of passengers. Sleep is a critical factor.

• Ensure safety levels that meet or exceed conventional seats and engineering that is feasible.

• Ensure that the offering is within the parameters of a sustainable profitable operating plan for airlines.

It is no secret that there has been considerable interest in the "premium economy sector" which is the space that these offerings will inhabit. However, there are a wide variety of ideas on what to offer and how to build a cabin to meet this offering.

The principal constraint in design is the space in the "tube". Take away the aisle space required by regulation and there is a limited amount of 3-D space where the passenger accommodation needs to be created to best meet the human factors, the safety factors, and sound engineering and then have an operating cost low enough to enable the price points demanded by this market.

As floor space on the aircraft is limited and sleep is a critical human factor overnight for enabling the passenger's business process. There is a limit to the cost reduction possible with horizontal flat beds on a single tier. Therefore the recent interest in vertical space for efficient deployment of passengers to meet their requirements at a cost low enough to enable price points they will accept.

Vertical Space - the key to the solution

The use of vertical space to increase the number of passengers in the same 3-D space offers the opportunity to spread the operating cost of the aircraft over more passengers but with the advantage that the size of the seat and bed offerings do not have to be made uncomfortably small. However, this is a new paradigm that has many pitfalls and careful design is imperative.

The following are some of the show stoppers in using vertical space in tiered architectures that are not issues in a single level deployment.

SAFETY PITFALLS

• In upper levels of tiered architectures, shared leg room during a 90 second emergency evacuation can be disastrous as a locked mechanism on a seat will not allow middle passengers out. There is no adjacent floor to step onto while climbing over a seat.

• Shared ladders in a 90 second evacuation can be disastrous with handicapped or injured passengers on the ladder while others wait.

• Visibility of the lower tier in seeing the upper tier as they egress during a 90 second emergency evacuation, to ensure that they don't land on the top of passengers on the lower tier or making their way out of the lower tier.

• Sleep accommodation not designed for crash conditions and  far removed  from the seats will create a safety hazard.

UTILITY & COMFORT  PITFALLS

• Fully flat horizontal bed not possible.

• Aisle access for all passengers not easy.

• Position of passenger depends on other passenger positions.

• Communication with and service by cabin attendants are ergonomically efficient.

• Privacy when desired

Vertical space - market interest ?

So in theory there are reasons for the use of vertical space for creating a new cabin paradigm. However we at MMILLENNIUMM GROUP needed to have clear market corroboration that there will not be psychological factors that will prevent market acceptance.

We therefore conducted a Market Survey at Dulles International airport in Washington DC for long haul passengers travelling to different parts of the globe.

We asked them to consider 3 options - all using the same space and priced identically:

1. The Air Sleeper that is tiered with 3 steps to the upper tier.
2. A Premium economy seat with a pitch of 37"
3.  An economy seat with the option to sleep on time shared beds at a remote location in the aircraft when they become available.

77% chose the tiered Air Sleeper. 13% chose the conventional premium economy seats. 9% chose the conventional economy seat with the time shared bed.

Vertical space offering by the Air Sleeper

Air Sleepers are designed for markets all the way from economy and up. For this market our offerings in the premium economy can support a 6ft 3in lie-flat and horizontal  experience. It is very much like most Business Class standard seats now around the world with a comparable width, but with about 2 to 3 times the number of seats as in conventional Business Class, thereby reducing cost per seat for the airlines.  A Business Class type seat that takes up half the space can be priced at a little over half the conventional Business Class price and still make more money for the Airline.

This is the space where the emerging Asian Market Tsunami lies!

Notably however the Air Sleeper and more generally the tiered architectures that use vertical space are a complementary product class to the traditional Business Travel market and not substitutes. Excellent design of traditional Business Class seats will continue to cater for a different market.

MMILLENNIUMM GROUP has had significant interest from airlines with strong long haul capabilities from around the world. We have commenced doing LOPAs for interested parties.
for more information www.AirSleeper.Info.

Airlines have toyed with the idea of offering in-flight gambling for years. But regulatory and technological barriers coupled with financial risks have kept the vast majority of scheduled carriers out of the game.

Even the most aggressive pursuers of ancillary revenue, like Ryanair - which intends to eventually harness OnAir's mobile connectivity service to offer in-flight gambling - thinks the proposition is "probably three, four years away".

While industry stakeholders continue to explore ways to turn aircraft into virtual casinos in the sky, there is a low-stakes gaming answer in the cards for airlines.

Portable in-flight entertainment (IFE) device maker digEcor has teamed up with Los Angeles-based start-up Flight Deck Gaming to offer what they say will be memorable gaming experiences to passengers and fresh ancillary revenue streams for airlines.

Under a new exclusive partnership, Flight Deck Gaming is optimizing a range of casual, skill-based and casino-style games or 'games of chance' for play on digEcor's handheld IFE device known as the digEplayer.

"For us, this has been a partnership and relationship we've been searching for quite a while and [we] finally feel we've found the right team," says Brad Heckel, president of digEcor, which has traditionally offered gaming content on the digEplayer from gaming content provider DTI.

"We are in very specific conversations with probably half a dozen airlines, where Flight Deck Gaming is either already included in the contract or is part of the discussion for the offering, and I might add that the airlines have been very receptive to the concept and to what it is that Flight Deck Gaming can bring in terms of games and ancillary revenue."

According to statistical research from GrabStats, online gaming related revenue is expected to exceed $20 billion by 2012. In-Stat Research says revenue derived from various Wi-Fi enabled devices will surpass $1 billion by 2012. Getting a slice of this pie from airline passengers can be accomplished by capturing pre-flight, in-flight and post-flight revenue, says Flight Deck Gaming managing partner Howard Woods.

In addition to basic subscriptions, there are advertising opportunities - either alongside or actually embedded into the game itself - and sponsorship opportunities, which work particularly well with network and tournament type game play, says Woods. "All of those or any combination is embedded in the model we employ to create total revenue."

Flight Deck Gaming takes the position that airlines should not have to pay for games nor should passengers have to pay outright to play. "When you look at the entire business chain of the gaming industry, charging the passenger to play is an obsolete model," says Woods.

Under the Flight Deck Gaming/digEcor partnership, carriers that want to offer casino-style games, such as poker or virtual roulette, on portable players can do so but at "very little risk" to them, says Heckel, adding: "In essence, you have the same opportunities [as gambling] but it's a completely legal environment."

However, in jurisdictions where full-blown in-flight gambling is permitted, Flight Deck Gaming and digEcor "could make the same game available in a mode" that would facilitate that. "We can make that available, but whether we would do that would be determined by the particular carrier and that environment," says Woods.

The Flight Deck Gaming executive says two factors are coming together at once to make low-stakes in-flight gaming a viable proposition for airline revenue generation right now.

"There has probably never been a higher motivation for ancillary revenue in the airline industry, and, on the other hand, the gaming industry - which has typically been a couple generations ahead and bypassed the airline and transit industries - is sitting down and spending the effort to make the terrestrial gaming model scalable, in an industry that has [previously] taken a fragmented approach. The airline industry has never been hungrier for ancillary revenue."

What is the Alliance for Passenger Connectivity, which boasts several members, including Arinc, AeroMobile, Panasonic, ViaSat, Rockwell Collins and others?

The alliance's web site says it is a "coalition of companies dedicated to enabling passengers and crew on board aircraft to stay connected while in flight" and that it will "also serve to aid regulators in understanding existing regional and international precedent for facilitating introduction of passenger connectivity solutions".

That's a bit vague. Surely there is more to it than that? I put my question to a number of very clued in IFE&C folks, and here is what I've been able to come up with by way of a response. I've paraphrased the comments for your reading ease.

The Alliance for Passenger Connectivity hopes to provide a one-stop-shop to countries that are not yet knowledgeable about Ku-band-based connectivity. If, for example, you are a regulator in Kenya and an airline is planning to offer Ku-band-based connectivity in your airspace or directly in your country, you may not have any idea there is an ITU-R recommendation - M.1643 - that describes some baseline requirements for FSS aircraft earth stations in the 14-14.6 GHz band (that's the Ku-band for the few non-nerdlingers reading this blog).

So the various service providers applying for that could tell the regulator: 'You can check out this site and it has all the information'. Rather than going to the ITU web site and looking for the specific recommendations, you can go to the Alliance for Passenger Connectivity and look at how other regulatory bodies have treated such requests.

The Kenyan regulator could look and see what everyone else has done, and decide if it is reasonable to permit such a service in its own country. If the alliance wasn't there, Kenya and other nations in Africa, South America and other parts of the third world would have to do a lot more digging.

Any of the more active countries in the regulatory process probably already have this information closer to their fingertips (especially if they had active Connexion by Boeing-equipped planes flying from or in their airspace in years past).

During the recent WAEA connectivity workshop in Everett, Panasonic said it has secured licenses for its Ku-band solution, eXConnect, in over 150 countries. There are around 200 countries in the world, give or take, so Panasonic is saying it has approvals in a big ole chunk.

But one of the things that some of these little countries do, because they don't have all the rules and regulations in place, or manpower to support putting the rules in place, is to simply not respond to service providers' requests to operate in the Ku band. If a service provider doesn't hear back from the country in 90 days, it sends out another letter, and if it still doesn't get a response, it assumes it is 'good to go' in that country. (I'm told that this practice isn't sneaky or out of the ordinary, and that it was a path paved by CBB.) 

There are plenty of countries where one does need to get an approval, however. That includes the USA. Row 44 recently received permanent authority from the regulator, for example.

So what is the Alliance for Passenger Connectivity? It appears to be a tool to promote regulatory approval for global Ku-band service. Doesn't it?   

Brazilian operator TAM is a Super Trouper, and not simply because it offers Abba's greatest hits on its excellent in-flight entertainment systems (see pic). The carrier, which is readying to join the Star Alliance in April, today announced a heaping big deal with Amadeus to replace scads of legacy systems with the IT giant's Altea customer management solution. Read all the details here.

I had the chance to sit down with TAM and Amadeus executives this morning in Sao Paolo, and the conversation was interesting, to say the very least.

First of all, let me tell you that TAM is serious about in-flight connectivity. The carrier already offers satellite telephone functionality plus basic text messaging and email through its IFE systems on international aircraft (I tried the former and got through to Bedford, Pennsylvania without a bother - a price of $6/min might force one to keep such calls short, however). Side note: Isn't it ludicrous that wired - and wireless - calls are happening throughout the world, but the USA continues to hold some sort of baseless, anti-phone attitude?

Anyhoo, TAM doesn't roll like that (thank goodness). The carrier is getting ready to bring OnAir's mobile connectivity solution to Airbus A320 narrowbodies. "The first aircraft is coming this year with the system," says TAM vice-president commercial and planning Paulo Castello Branco. As such, TAM will become the first company on the continent to offer the Airbus/SITA joint venture's offering.

TAM tells me that the system is expected to be operational by the second half of 2009, "but it depends on the approval of ANAC and Anatel (National Agency of Telecommunications), as well as the legislation that authorizes cell phones use only when the airplane is landed and with its doors opened".

Okay, RWG, you jump from Amadeus to integrated IFE to OnAir, what gives? Well, despite the fact that these things seem mutually exclusive (to some), they don't have to be. The Altea solution keeps passengers' flight histories and individual preferences referenced, and so it is just the sort of IT platform that will help usher in THE CABIN OF THE FUTURE (cue Star Trek soundtrack).

So, let's lay out the scenario. You're an airline and you've got vital customer profiles - care of Altea - at your fingertips. And, lookie here, you've also got a robust in-flight connectivity link (care of OnAir or AeroMobile or Aircell or Row 44 or Panasonic, etc). Maybe now you can customize the passengers' in-flight experience in real time. And the passengers can feel like you (the airline) really care about them and all their interests and pastimes (perhaps a carrier should try to flog Mamma Mia tickets to Runway Girl, for example).

What if you're a passenger on a delayed flight and you need to rebook a connecting flight? Well maybe you'll be able to do that through your IFE system, which might know the carrier's inventory (and be pulling it from Altea's inventory tool).

"The scenario you described is very feasible using Altea," says Amadeus director global airline IT Jean-Philippe Mesure, noting that certain data "can be fed to individual seats".

He adds: "The ease of integration [with Altea] allows a lot of new business opportunities for the airline."

Knowing me, knowing you, it is then...

I really must have too many balls in the air (easy) or perhaps I'm going slightly bonkers (I prefer the term "eccentric"), because I just took a good hard look at my desktop and found the two hottest IFE&C presentations of late just sitting there, begging to be posted to Runway Girl.

Now then, if you're a WAEA member, you need read no further. You've got access to these two presentations (as well as a treasure trove of others, yee lucky ducks). But, if you're not a WAEA member, then do read on.

The first presentation, given by Airbus connectivity programme director Antoine Francois at the recent WAEA single-focus connectivity workshop in Everett, Washington, spells out Airbus' exact connectivity strategy, a strategy that has come under fire of late.

You likey the leaky line? Well maybe you'd like one satcom antenna to take care of all your connectivity needs (cockpit and cabin). The following two slides from Francois' WAEA speech say A LOT - and gives you a visual indication of what all the controversy is about - but you can view the entire presentation here: WAEA single focus workshop.pdf

John Craig, of Boeing cabin and network systems, also gave a great presentation at the WAEA workshop. It was, in fact, very similar (if not identical) to the one he gave at the Inmarsat aeronautical conference in Vancouver. Here is a telling slide, but Craig's entire presentation can be read here: Wed_AM-Boeing_Craig.pdf