Fly Connected

The Latest Offerings In Onboard Technology

The latest mantra of Airlines across the globe to woo business travellers is ‘stay connected on air, any where’ and they are racing ahead to provide in-flight email access, high speed Internet connectivity and other wireless technologies, including possibly cell phone usage says Bhisham Mansukhani

The 140 passengers on-board Jet Blue Flight 292 circa September 22, 2005 were getting a bit impatient as the aircraft had been circling over Los Angeles city for some time. However, their impatience turned to shock when suddenly the television screens in front of them beamed a live news report about an A-320 aircraft with the front landing gear stuck sideways trying to make an emergency landing at the Los Angeles International Airport. They watched in numbing panic as the surreal and bizarre situation hit home, that they were actually watching a live feed of their own aircraft.

The pilots landed on the tarmac on the plane's rear landing gear and then gently lowered the nose. As soon as the dual tires on the front landing gear hit the runway, they began to smoke, then erupted in sparks and flames, but quickly extinguished on their own as the plane rolled to a stop, surrounded by emergency rescue crews. The entire drama was captured live by circling news helicopters and watched in wide eyed horror by the passengers inside the stricken Jet Blue plane, all thanks to advancement in technology and the wonders it can do with on-board connectivity.

Now, while this isn't the greatest preface to an article that celebrates the progress of on-board connectivity, it isn't the worst ploy to drive home the point of literal access that airline passengers have to about all the broadcasted information that the earth-bound do and that too, simultaneously. Live television, entertainment, Internet connectivity sans the limitations of pre-loaded cache and more importantly, and scarily, cell phone usage that bids goodbye to the final escape from ambient ring tone.

Whatever next?! The passenger aircraft is losing, and will continue to lose every single degree of separation from its more grounded environment, including saunas, with the sole and unavoidable chore of being air borne until we can mutter,'Beam Me Up Scottie'. But, on the specific subject of on-board connectivity, which until recently was strictly limited to the cockpit by legal decree and then by cavernous phone minutes that cost as much as the flight and ditto with the limited and lagging Internet access, the airlines and aircraft manufacturers have come a long way.

Surfing, Watching, Talking, Wirefree!

While on-board email access is not likely to drop jaws anymore, the prospect of wireless Internet access (via Wi-Fi) still does, in spite of the very real visions Lufthansa raised with its historic Munich - Los Angeles flight in May 2004, using equipment and technology provided by Boeing's purpose-run arm, Connexion. The flight witnessed a very privileged passenger, obviously a Boeing domo, send an email to someone way below.

Connexion was conceived by Boeing to provide mobile information services like real-time, high-speed connectivity to airline passengers, giving them access to their personal and business email accounts, including attachments and entertainment content via broadband or Ethernet just as they would at home or in office. Connexion already provides Wi-Fi on more than 60 aircraft owned by a number of carriers including SAS, JML, Singapore, Lufthansa and Austrian airlines. As competition invariably compels a staggered rollout of on-board Wi-Fi, passengers will be able to use their Wi-Fi enabled laptops and PDAs to access the Internet in real-time, in much the same way they always do on ground. Better still, the wire mesh that is inescapably bundled with an Ethernet connection will also be consigned to the bin.

But where Boeing does well, Airbus tries to do better. The European consortium, in 2004, bundled leading technology veterans Tenzing and SITA into its fold with single entity, OnAir. It is now ready to roll out on-board wireless technology as standard fare for all aircraft it manufactures. OnAir has been already offering in-seat telephony, in-seat SMS, email and instant messaging from passengers' laptops for sometime now. OnAir is also set to offer access to corporate Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and Internet browsing capabilities. These will be followed in 2006 by mobile telephony, which will enable passengers to use their own phones safely on-board to make and receive calls and text messages. Airbus expects the service to be affordable, with passengers on flights within North America paying $ 4.95 for unlimited access to the titles and senders of their e-mails, plus 50 cents to read or send each page of text.

European, Asian, even Middle Eastern airlines - which rely heavily on business travellers, particularly on long-haul flights - are taking the plunge in increasing numbers. Boeing has signed up 13 foreign airlines since 2003, with nine already offering the service to customers on 84 planes, soon to be 100. And their motivation is hardly misplaced.

Demand among airline passengers for in-flight voice and data connectivity is at an all time high according to EU-funded research from independent consultancy ESYS. According to separate research from SITA, by 2006, 46 per cent of the airlines will offer email and 45 per cent SMS. A survey by US-based Innovation Analysis Group recently found that more than half of all frequent fliers say they are willing to pay for an in-flight Internet connection, even if their company will not reimburse them. "We are seeing," said a principal at Innovation Analysis, "that this technology will probably pay for itself faster than anything else on board."

The same epitaph cannot be applied to one of Wi-fi's bundled and very crucial facility, although give it another two years at best and the aircraft will never again be the silence zone it was much loved for. Cell phone usage on-board has gone from being a pet nuisance to an illegal offense to a foreseeable value-add. Although in-flight telephony has been shouted about, its novelty has been paled by a premium of $10 per minute charged to credit cards.

While airlines used to cry themselves hoarse over defiant passengers who would feign their in-flight proscriptions, they are now politely aligning themselves for a head start in offering on-board cell phone usage when the powers-that-be pull out all the stops, which hitherto still remain in place. As such, about 20 per cent of all airlines plan to introduce an in-flight mobile telephone service by 2007. Boeing has enabled GSM voice services on board, by installing pico cells (small mobile base stations) on some planes. The intention, the company states is to "turn what is usually downtime into productive time." Siemens is already developing a light-weight GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) pico cell and has been contracted to provide this to OnAir. This system will let passengers use their mobile phones during flights without disrupting aircraft systems and will be ready for any Airbus A-320 aircraft flying on routes in Western Europe by the second half of 2006.

By installing a laptop-sized on-board server and a series of lightweight cellular base stations above the seating areas, the companies will convert digital telephone signals into packets of data that will travel over a satellite link to the telecommunication provider's ground infrastructure and back. Tenzing Communications has already demonstrated airborne two-way short messaging service (SMS) to mobile phones worldwide. Passengers can send and reply to SMS messages via their seat-back video screen, therefore not needing a cell phone.

Singapore Airlines did a commendable first by introducing live TV on its international flights this July on the back of Connexion's broadband service. The technology release peeled off perhaps one of the most overdue distinctions between the airborne and otherwise. While, for now, only those with laptops and PDAs will be able to view live television on Connexion's wireless platform, 2006 will see live shows streamed to each seat-back screen.

The bouquet of channels though, interestingly, is decidedly focussed on the business traveller - CNBC, EuroNews, BBC World and Eurosportnews. Although this is part of an exclusive deal between SIA and Boeing, other carriers are already lining up their plans for a launch following the expiry of the exclusivity clause, so there falls another brief monopoly. US satellite provider DirecTV Group though, has already been offering live TV services on JetBlue, yet didn't earn the airline any brownie points for giving its passengers an unpaid clip of reality television that they also starred in! Rival Airbus-controlled Tenzing is at it too, having forged an alliance with Inmarsat-based in-flight television promoter Airia covering the provision of an integrated TV.

Goodbye, Comfort Zone

Frank Hanzlik, managing director of the Wi-Fi Alliance, an industry trade group in Austin, Texas, says,"The key thing is that people are starting to expect Wi-Fi wherever they go. A few years ago, Wi-Fi on an airplane would have seemed strange, but now people think they can't be away from their business for too long, and they want access to email all the time." Yet there is enough evidence already waiting to contradict Hanzlick.

Boeing's Wi-Fi dream was part nightmare. Boeing had to prove that the Wi-Fi and the satellite link would not interfere with systems on the planes and had to get approval from airline authorities and from radio communications authorities of about 100 countries. Worse, the aircraft manufacturer was spooked when a corporate customer who also happened to be a Wi-Fi equipment maker declined to use the facility on-board. Security is another massing issue. US government law enforcement officials, fearing that terrorists could potentially exploit emerging in-flight broadband services to remotely activate bombs or coordinate hijackings, asked regulators for authorisation to monitor any passenger's Internet use within 10 minutes of obtaining court permission.

Never mind security fears, there is basic viability issue to worry about first. Wi-fi is being brandished as expensive - $9.95 an hour - swelled by the premium of cost borne by the airline to install the equipment and technology, footing a bill of more than $600,000 and grounding the aircraft for two weeks, losing valuable air time. With demand for the service estimated to be about 20 percent of all passengers, Wi-Fi, for now seems imminently unviable.

Also, airlines aren't altogether sure if business travellers see the aircraft as an extension of their offices or their best escape from it. That fear may not be altogether unfounded if one notices the growing voice of protest against the possibility of allowing cell-phone usage on-board because some of the voices are being let out by business travellers themselves. While governments are concerned about whether signals from cell phones can interfere with the aircraft's navigation, communication and traffic avoidance systems, passengers dread losing their cherished silence on-board and sleep. "Being on a plane has become a mini-retreat for me. Long international flights are like vacation. No phone, no email and no guilt for being unreachable," avers a business traveller.

That assumption may soon meet a rude shock. Imagine a packed fuselage of 800 people, all armed with cell phones with distinct ring and message tones. The din is inescapable and may be the greatest news for noise-cancelling device pushers. The dilemma thickens.

Hail Business Traveller

Back in one of the BC years, if Julius Caesar had deputed his almost-heir apparent Marc Antony on one of the Roman's many exercises of assertion to Cleopatra's Egypt, and Antony had protested over the prospect of missing an entire season of gladiator shows and crash courses in incendiary oratory while he painfully sailed between the Italian and African coasts, Caesar would have severely chided him and muttered under his breath, `He's lost it'.

And yet at AD 2005, the accomplishment of near supersonic levels of flight speed resulting in months of travel saved is not quite enough for the unimpressed business traveller. With little to nil regard for a peeved Caesar and vigorously overworked aircraft technicians, he wants his time to be put to the best use - and being suspended in flight, 30,000 feet above ground, no longer seems like a valid excuse for merely tanking up on martinis and the director's cut of Wall Street.

While the criticism of the apparently flimsy business models that airlines have placed their connectivity services on is not without substance, thrift is expected to expunge doubts of sustenance in this regard, and the forecasts of business traveller affinities in the long term remain favourably lopsided. He wants to communicate with the world below and maybe even catch up with the scoreline too. Turns out, it's hardly a big ask anymore, so he might as well wish for more. Golf, anyone?