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VA W I - F I
undertake the bulk of the installations
on the 737s, which will take about four
days per aircraft to complete.
Asked how Virgin Australia would
measure the return on investment
on its Wi-Fi installation, Tobias said:
“The research that we’ve done around
net lag and our customer experience
overall is the most important
thing when it comes to this kind of
investment.”
“As an airline we are in the
customer service industry and yes we
are trying to get people from point to
point but are very aware that people
have choices and for us the payoff
is definitely in guests preferring to
fly with us because they’ve had an
outstanding experience.”
Further, Tobias said there was a
lot of work going on in other ways to
take advantage of having a connected
aircraft, both from a passenger
experience and operational point of
view. However, she declined to offer
details.
“There are a number of other
applications and we are at the
beginning of our journey and we’ve
got a lot of innovation work going on
to determine exactly what the best
use of the technology is for us so you
are going to have to watch this space,”
Tobias said.
“Certainly our ability for our cabin
crew, who do an amazing job already,
to get even better and to deliver more
personalised service than they do now,
will only become greater as we get this
connectivity on board.”
Qantas sets 2020, 2021 timetable for
international Wi-Fi
While Virgin Australia is currently the
only Australian airline to offer inflight
internet Wi-Fi on international flights,
Qantas did trial Wi-Fi for a short time
on its Airbus A380 flights between
Australia and the United States in
- However it was restricted to
those in first and business class and
the reported take-up was low.
In April 2017, Qantas relaunched
an inflight internet Wi-Fi service in
partnership with ViaSat and nbn Co
for domestic flights. It uses Ka band
satellites and is a free offering for all
passengers.
Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce
said the airline has held off on inflight
internet Wi-Fi on its international
flights because it did not want to have
a “sub-standard product”.
“There is a very good reason why
we don’t have Wi-Fi at the moment.
Because there’s two different bands
of Wi-Fi,” Joyce told reporters on
the sidelines of the International Air
Transport Association (IATA) annual
general meeting in Sydney on June 4.
“There’s Ku and Ka and Ku is the
slower band where you can’t have
everybody on the aircraft and you
certainly can’t have people streaming.
The product internationally is terrible
we think. And we’ve tried it with the
Ku band.
“Bizarrely if you put the old
product, the Ku, on you have to rip
her off and put the new antennas, new
equipment in to get ready for the new
one. That’s the reason we don’t have it
internationally.
“We want it to be as good as
domestic and we’re a little bit
dependent on the new technology.”
As such, Qantas was waiting for
the launch of Ka band satellites from
ViaSat before considering the rollout
of Wi-Fi on its international flights.
“ViaSat have three satellitesthey are going to launch,” Joyce
explained.
“And our region is the last one to
be covered by it but we think it will
be covered in 2020, 2021.”
The airline said in late May 2018
it had expected to have two of its 12
A330-200s which are predominantly
used for domestic services and half
of its 75 737-800s fitted with Wi-Fi
by the end of June 2018.
And across the Tasman, Air New
Zealand commenced trials on its
Boeing 777-300ER fleet in October- According to the airline’s
website, the 777-200ER fleet
was next to have Wi-Fi hardware
installed, followed by the remainder
of its international fleet comprising
the 787-9s and Airbus A320s.
The New Zealand flag carrier
has chosen Inmarsat and its GX for
Aviation product, which uses Global
Xpress Ka band satellite network.
VH-VPH’s radome installation.
SETH JAWORSKIEngineers at work in the
avionics bay.SETH JAWORSKI