Picking the Hits: How Air Canada Uses Data Analytics to Optimize Its IFE Content
At APEX TECH 2020, delegates learned how Air Canada is tweaking its content strategy using insights about its in-flight entertainment selection, provided by Spafax IQ.
Gogo and SmartSky Networks Share 5G Plans
At APEX TECH 2020, in-flight connectivity providers Gogo and SmartSky Networks shared their excitement about the benefits of 5G technology.
Cool Running
Carlisle IT has a overheating solution for electronically steered antennas
Guess Where I’m Calling From?
There was a time when smartphones weren’t smart, and you still dialed a call. Connectivity meant that you knew how to hook up a turntable and a cassette deck to the stereo, and bandwidth was the size of the elastic in your sweat pants. Then, in the 1980s, personal computers and mobile cellular phones disrupted the tech landscape, and airline passengers started seeing Airfone handsets in the cabin.
Members Only
From a specialty glass manufacturer to an orchestra, APEX welcomes more companies from different sectors into its fold. Here are some of the newest members to join the association.
Tracking Airplanes
The tragic unsolved disappearance of Malaysia Airlines MH370, and the two-year search for the black boxes from Air France AF447 has focused the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the airline industry to adopt new standards for position reporting. Starting in 2018, airlines will be responsible for tracking aircraft every 15 minutes, and by 2021, the standard will include minute-by-minute autonomous tracking of aircraft in distress.
Capacity Booster
Modern commercial airliners are filled with backups to the backups, all designed to get us to our destination safely and efficiently. There are multiple autopilots and flight control systems, secondary hydraulic and electrical systems and two engines. The pilot and co-pilot are even server different meals, so should one of them come down with food poisoning, there is always a backup. Operators of communications satellites face similar demands in maintaining service, which are compounded by the orbital location of their satellites: over 22,000 miles above the equator.
F4 is A-OK: Inmarsat Launches Fourth GX Satellite
Inmarsat’s I-5 F4 satellite thundered into space yesterday evening, carried by a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster. In a picture-perfect evening liftoff, the rocket launched at exactly 7:21 p.m. (EDT), precisely at the beginning of the launch window.
Space Odyssey
ViaSat-2 sat quietly on its cradle in the clean room, no longer attended to by scores of gowned technicians. Antennas folded, solar panels and radiators tightly retracted. Its large rectangular structure could have been mistaken for an industrial appliance, rather than a highly advanced communications satellite bound for space. The satellite was ready to be enclosed in a specialized shipping container, a cocoon, to protect the satellite during its flight to French Guiana. And soon after being launched on an Ariane 5, ViaSat-2 will stretch out its 158-foot-long solar panels, ushering in new capabilities of Ka-band connectivity.
Wired Up
Passengers are unlikely to be unaware of the complexity of the aircraft systems that are hidden from view. After all, their onboard interactions are limited to aircraft seats, flight attendants and in-flight entertainment systems. Like a human nervous system, an aircraft’s wiring carries signals and information critical to the safe operation of the airplane. Carlisle IT, W.L. Gore and AeroFlite are a few of the companies that design and manufacture “the nerves.” Connecting everything from the fly-by-wire flight control systems to the coffeemaker in the galley, miles of wires, thousands of connectors, and tens of thousands of support brackets have to be cut, bundled, tested and installed.