Jetblue reveals technological shifts that shape paxex

Today's passengers have different needs and expectations than yesterday's passengers, even when it comes to Inflight connectivity. When JetBlue Airways and his partner lead the introduction of the complete, fast, free, free Inflight connectivity in 2013, customers used download functions much more than upload.

At that time, the relationship between download and upload was about ten to one. “Ten things were downloaded for every uploaded thing,” said Jetblue Manager IFE & C Ken Mcquillan at the APEX Tech conference in Los Angeles. And over a decade, this paradigm remained relatively static. However, the past two years have changed massively.

Now the download/upload ratio is “like three to one, and it will probably be two to one and one to one in the next two years,” said Mcquillan and emphasized a fundamental change in passenger behavior. “This is huge, isn't it? Our systems are not really able to maintain this.”

The jetblue fleet is equipped with the IFC-based IFC satellite system (GEO) from Viasat. The currently independent GEO system, said Mcquillan, served Jetblue well and Viasat is an “excellent” partner. Although Ott's streaming is easy for Jetblue and its Aero-ISP, “other things are required, both the down and upload that really restrict the network”.

With TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook with billions of users, you will not surprise you, dear reader, to find out that Jetblue customers use much more on video-centered and automatically playing apps on board than in 2013.

“You use things that really require a lot of resources, much more than what you needed in the past,” Mcquillan remarked. “People expect them to be able to do things on the plane that they do in their office or in their house, and that has really put up with everything because there is a lot of demand at the moment, and it really shows that we have to think carefully about what our customers would expect.”

And this is the challenge of not only putting Jetblue, but also in practically every airline that takes care of the passenger experience and meets the connectivity needs of the modern traveler both today and in the future. The technology changes at Breakneck speeds. But how can airlines avoid and fear that airlines as a wealth of new IFC options avoid the remorse of the buyer?

Mcquillan said he was not surprised that the industry is interested in multi-orbit and even agnostic IFC solutions to use the emerging technology.

Finally, redundancy and failure safety arguments have to be carried out in order not to be included in a single orbit or actually in a single network. Over time, even an argument for more than one service provider could be made on board an aircraft.

The partner Viasat from Jetblue does not sit on his hands. It has announced an Amara brand-NextGen-IFC-Roadmap for airlines that enables it to support Multi-orbit-IFC compared to its current GM-40 gimbaled antenna.

Ultimately, Viasat expects an electronically steerable antenna to bring two reservations onto the market, which can also speak to Leo and Geo, with the intention, a latency-sensitive applications via Leo and high density with high density such as streaming video (but it could also simply be one Leo antenna-antenna-antenna-antenna-antenna-anna-antna-antenna-antenna-antenna antenna antenna can be linked with high GM-40 hardware.)

Understandably, in view of the hot competitive nature of the airline market, Mcquillan would not be drawn to the details of the Nextgen IFC strategy from Jetblue, but admitted that Amara is “absolutely” the type of roadmap that Jetblue wants to see.

“[V]IASAT in the direction of a multi-orbit solution is great for the industry, right? Viasat has a lot of weight with your name in your product. And so it is very important for the aviation industry because they have many customers and seek these customers for something that goes beyond a single geo-solution in their aircraft.

And there is also a solution … maybe only one antenna that does everything, right, that's a great solution. There are also other options for dual antennas, so there is definitely a lot of positivity, especially if Viasat is ready to look at this new technology and to say: “Hey, maybe we won't keep all of our eggs in this one geo basket.”

And it is very important for us as an airline because we are looking at this and say: “Okay, if we act for the future, we not only have to look at what is available today, but also what could be available in the street. What we register today until we implement something today, technology on our plane, we may look at 18 months, two years, everything can be changed again, right?

Having a parter that is open to changes and forward -looking appearance is of crucial importance for Jetblue.

“And I think you really need this as a airline. You need someone who provides you with solutions that are longer than today,” Mcquillan, as a discussion participant in the IFC Revolution meeting, which was moderated by your author at Apex Tech.

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