In-flight connectivity and IFE provider Gogo is giving prospective customers at Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg a chance to sample its satellite-based 2Ku product at 30,000ft. The Chicago-based company has brought its newly-outfitted Boeing 737-500 to Hamburg for the first time, basing it at the airport where it will be used for invitation-only flights.
Equipped with 42 economy and 16 business class seats, the distinctively-liveried Jimmy Ray – named after the founder of Gogo in the early 1990s – is a 24-year-old former Air France and Malaysia Airlines airliner, registration N321GG. The company last year obtained US Federal Aviation Administration approval to fit it out with radome and antenna and use it as a flying lab and demonstrator.
CHALLENGER
Gogo previously used a Bombardier Challenger 300 as its testbed – the company also serves the corporate aviation sector – but the business jet was not suitable for hosting the airline-targeted 2Ku system. Instead the equipment was installed on the 737, and Gogo began operating flights late last year. The trip to Europe – the company also conducted a media demonstration flight in the UK on 1 April – marks the first time the aircraft has carried non-Gogo employees outside North America.
Since announcing the 2Ku system at AIX in 2014, Gogo has secured 10 customers for the technology, including Aeromexico, Virgin Atlantic, Delta, United, GOL, Japan Air Lines and Hainan Airlines, representing a total of 850 aircraft. The latest, Air Canada, confirmed in March that it would fit 2Ku to its Boeing 777s this autumn, and eventually to its entire widebody fleet, which comprises Airbus A330-300s, Boeing 787s and 767-300ERs.
Late last year, Gogo won a supplemental type certificate to install 2Ku on 737s, clearing the way for a deal to fit the system on Aeromexico’s fleet of 31 737-800s and 19 737-700s. Also in 2015, Gogo secured its first Latin American contract for 2Ku with an agreement to fit it on GOL’s entire fleet. When rolled out later this year, GOL will become the first airline in Brazil to offer passengers in-flight broadband internet, says Gogo.
But perhaps its most significant win last year was Delta, which plans to fit more than 250 aircraft with 2Ku from this year, as well as new airliners as they join the fleet. Gogo will also partner Delta “in the launch of next generation air to ground technologies for short-haul domestic aircraft flying with the USA”. Gogo chief executive Michael Small said then that the US airline would have “the largest connected fleet in the world”.
Gogo has said 2Ku’s data transfer speeds will initially be as fast as 73 megabits per second but eventually reach 100 Mbps as Ku satellites become available. This compares with less than 10 Mbps for Gogo’s air-to-ground connectivity services – ATG and its successor ATG-4 – that are installed on more than 2,000 aircraft. Gogo believes these bandwidths could permit it to expand from passenger connectivity into more operational datalink services for airlines.
TRANSFER SPEEDS
The leap in capability between Gogo’s existing products and 2Ku has created its own headaches. Long-term client American Airlines has dropped a lawsuit against Gogo alleging that its existing ATG system was no longer competitive with satellite-based systems being offered by competitor airlines, and bidding to end a contract. Gogo said in a court filing in February that it planned to submit an alternative proposal for a 2Ku package to American.
More than half of travellers consider access to wi-fi when choosing an airline, with demand strongest outside the USA and Canada, where the technology is commonplace, according to a survey by Gogo.
Outside North America, 86% of passengers said they were interested in using in-flight connectivity, compared with 75% in the USA and Canada. When it comes to IFE, 76% of non-North Americans are interested, with 67% giving a similar response in the USA and Canada. Nine in 10 global passengers who made a round-trip flight in the past year brought a wi-fi enabled device onboard, with Android the most popular operating system.
“The need for ubiquitous connectivity is no secret. There are few places on earth today that people can’t connect and the plane is the last frontier,” says Ash El Difrawi, Gogo chief commercial officer. “What’s surprising is the demand is actually higher outside [North America], where we are just scratching the surface in terms of connecting planes.”
Source: Flight Daily News
