Amid a veritable avalanche of new airline seats at the recent Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg were several new moves in the multi-dimensional chess game of who gets to design, specify, provide, operate and manage the digital cabin.
Airlines have yet to come to a common conclusion on what the final digital cabin game will look like — or even in some cases what the rules will be — but this year’s Expo revealed several new plays by key players setting out their digitalisation stalls.
Airbus plans new “flying smartphone” ecosystem backbone, Airspace Link
The announcement with the biggest digital read-across at AIX was Airspace Link, a new backbone to the connected aircraft that Airbus calls “a real open connected ecosystem”.
“Airspace Link is a multi-layered and flexible approach, which starts with the Intelligent Core Management Platform – iCMP. This is the digital backbone covering the cabin management system as well as other layers,” explains André Schneider, vice president for cabin and cargo programmes at Airbus.
Schneider highlights that the next part of the ecosystem will be the Internet of Things services that enable connection of cabin elements: seats, bins, galleys, life vests, and so on, with an app store to host both passenger-focussed and operational apps.
“Last but not least,” Schneider explains, “is the ability to connect the aircraft with the outside world. And here we are working on the connectivity elements, both air-to-ground and also satellite-based to have a flexible connectivity layer – so we can really move towards an end-to-end platform.”
Let’s start with the iCMP, or intelligent Core Management Platform. This replaces the previous Cabin Intercommunication Data System, or CIDS. iCMP is based on fibre-optic and is essentially an infrastructure play for a smart platform, focussing on cabin management controls, data access, data management, and content including inflight entertainment (IFE). iCMP will roll out across Airbus’ aircraft, starting with the A320neo family in 2026.
Airbus is also making an Internet of Things services move, where Airspace Link plays an aggregator or integrator role for cabin data. This might include customer relationship management, ground operations and supplier data, as well as the data from the increasingly sensor-equipped cabin: welcome or display panels, the digital galley, connected seats, and connected cargo.
The App Store element is an internal marketplace, with Airbus, third party partner and airline internal apps available. The first app is now available: a wireless IFE implementation working with IFE providers Bluebox, Inflight Dublin and Display Interactive, building on the application launched for Titan Airways in 2019 and now also sold to Jetstar for its A321neo and Condor for its A330neo fleets.
Link Connect, meanwhile, is what Airbus calls an “agnostic connectivity platform”, enabling flexibility between satellite or air-to-ground systems — including Airbus’ supplier-furnished HBCplus programme.
LG-Lufthansa Technik JV AERQ plans competing AERENA option
The airframer-driven ecosystem model is, of course, just one of the options available to airlines for rolling out cabin digitalisation. AERQ — a joint venture between Korean electronics giant LG and aviation integrator/MRO house Lufthansa Technik — suggests another with its AERENA system.
Co-managing director Arnd Kikker says that AERQ is aiming AERENA squarely at airlines, and plans to make it the “playmaker of their digital cabin experience”.
Part platform, part deployment infrastructure, part inseat system, part cabin digital signage, and part wider data analytics suite, AERQ is leveraging cloud technology and modular architecture.
With the accelerated app integration that was shortlisted for the prestigious Crystal Cabin Awards this year, AERQ hopes that its mix of consumer electronics technology from LG — both for multi-use seatback screens and digital cabin signage — and its onboard environment expertise from Lufthansa Technik will win airlines over to its model.
Airbus-Inmarsat-ThinKom-Safran SFE play HBCplus means real off-the-shelf connectivity for airlines
In the late 2010s, Airbus’ High Bandwidth Connectivity programme was aiming to standardise the on-aircraft connectivity hardware environment as much as possible, to reduce the time and expense of customised, connectivity provider-installed hardware purchased as buyer-furnished equipment by the airline.
HBCplus, launched at AIX, is an extension of this work to create a full supplier-furnished catalogue that airlines can choose much in the same way as they might pick from a list of approved galleys and lavatories when outfitting an aircraft.
In this case, airlines are picking a Managed Service Provider (MSP), each of which will offer certified terminals, radomes and antennas as part of the package. The first MSP is Inmarsat, whose Global Xpress Ka-band satellite network will be partnered with a ThinKom antenna provided and integrated by Safran Passenger Innovations. Airbus is already planning to extend HBCplus to other MSPs, including those offering Ku-band networks.
There are clear benefits there for smaller, niche and hybrid airlines that might not have a large digital team for selection and implementation, or indeed the scale to secure advantageous pricing. But Airbus execs tell us that the airframer also expects to attract larger, digital-experienced airlines to the programme.
Combined with the developments around Airspace Link, Airbus says that HBCplus, which “enables the exchange of data as one seamlessly integrated aircraft system, is ideally positioned to unlock future digital services capacity and demand growth, allowing airlines to deliver a best in class passenger connectivity experience, in an exponentially growing market.”
China Mobile-Airbus MoU on domestic air-to-ground 5G in China
At present, air-to-ground (ATG) aviation connectivity exists in the US, with Gogo and SmartSky’s competing networks, and in the EU as part of the Deutsche Telekom-Inmarsat European Aviation Network, a hybrid ATG/satellite product.
ATG is advantageous in several ways: no need to loft a satellite into space, small antennas under the fuselage rather than draggy radomes on top, and much less lag than bouncing a signal from plane to geosynchronous orbit some 35,786 km (22,236 miles) above the earth and back down again.
It does, however, require a defined land-based market with regulatory alignment and little to no overwater requirement — the gap between, say, the UK and Spain over the Bay of Biscay, or the US Gulf Coast and Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, would generally be too large.
China, with its large domestic market and unique Internet characteristics, is clearly ripe for this sort of connectivity, so Airbus is working with China Mobile via a memorandum of understanding on 5G-based ATG domestically within China. The project expects to progress from pilot phase route trials to in-service evaluation, industrialisation and business model development.
Author: John Walton
Published: 7th July 2022
Image: AERENA Cabin Digital Signage
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