In-flight entertainment up-start Lumexis has thrown down the gauntlet, challenging industry heavyweights Panasonic Avionics and Thales to put up or shut up.

The company is displaying an entire 273-seat widebody shipset of its fibre optics-based IFE system in a completely open space at APEX.

Even after including "all the LRUs and cables, I'm certain the weight of 2.8lb per seat, is less than half" of that of competing IFE systems, says Lumexis chief technology officer Rich Salter. "That translates into a lot of operational cost savings for airlines."

Now that Lumexis has completely opened up about the weight of its widebody shipset, the firm is "challenging the other manufacturers to open up their booths and show everyone their systems," says Salter.

Lumexis in May revealed that low-cost operator FlyDubai will launch its high-bandwidth, fibre optics-based IFE system.

"We install the first system for FlyDubai in late October. It will [start] flying out of Dubai on the fifth of November and we do about one aircraft per month, on all brand new 737s," says Lumexis chief Doug Cline.

Source: Flight Daily News