Turboprops are an increasingly important part of the route landscape within aviation, growing niche markets, adding service and multiplying network effects. But these smaller aircraft pose digitalisation challenges, especially around their economics. We sat down with Catherine Brown, head of marketing at inflight digital services provider Bluebox, an early and leading provider within this space, to learn more.
Since inflight connectivity as we know it today launched in the late 2000s, it has often been seen as an add-on to inflight entertainment, initially focussing on the passenger experience, with options for service digitalisation, maintenance and flight deck connectivity added afterwards. But that model is changing — and quickly.
“Connectivity expands the potential of any digital platform, in both capability on offer and the return it delivers,” Brown tells us. “But installing traditional inflight entertainment no longer needs to be the underlying basis for a digital backbone — even if short-form content suits shorter routes better than the more usual movies for entertainment — and we’re seeing this play out with various customer enquiries and projects.”
Indeed, Brown says, when it comes to adding a digital backbone, “digital services generally, particularly onboard retail, are a compelling reason enough to consider the investment in a digital platform, even without connectivity.”
A key blocker to increasing the benefit to airlines of onboard retail revenue, which is a key piece of the puzzle for many carriers, is a lack of real-time connectivity. As card payments transitioned from paper to digital point-of-sale units, each transaction was stored up in the onboard card payment units until after each flight or day of service. A substantial amount of onboard fraud — passengers racking up large purchases of watches, fragrances, and other luxury items — was the unfortunate result of this blocker.
Enter, or rather re-enter, connectivity. “As an enabler for a digital services platform, it is also very beneficial in enabling real-time transactions, which in turn enables the sale of higher-value products — given reduced fraud risk — and so even greater ancillary revenue,” Brown explains. “It also enables the provision of real-time services, for example live customer servicing in case of travel disruptions, the sale of time-and-place-limited services, like theatre seat or restaurant bookings, and so on.”
But, by and large, the smallest end of this market has finished up at narrowbody jets.
Amortising investment across smaller aircraft on shorter stage lengths has been complicated
In terms of installing digital backbones, “the markets served by turboprops are typically shorter sector lengths and leaner rotes by passenger volume per flight given the smaller aircraft size, so the economics have to be different,” Brown explains. “An A320 or 737 can, by its passenger volume, carry more of an investment in the digital services in order to drive a return.”
This factor from the digital services side also reads across into inflight connectivity when geosynchronous earth orbit satellite Internet was the only option in markets outside North America (where Gogo, now Intelsat, built 3G and 4G air-to-ground networks). The antennas to communicate with these satellites, and the radomes streamlining them, are large and heavy, prohibitively so for most turboprop operations.
As a result, these aircraft have been left mostly unconnected beyond basic safety narrowband services.
“Data — bandwidth/rate and volume — requirements are very different for relaying relatively simple data points, such as pinging certain flight data from the flight deck, versus the heavy load of high-quality HD video streaming, which is what most consumers think of in terms of good connectivity,” Brown says. “The availability of internet connectivity to enable a truly on-the-ground experience on any flight is still a ways off. So the question is: what does the airline want connectivity to deliver, and how much of that is to ensure their passengers still have a positive inflight experience?”
Clearly, the cost and weight constraints versus the relatively limited benefits of seatback inflight entertainment on turboprop flights that might be an hour or less have not stacked up. But with almost every passenger carrying at least one wifi-capable device like a smartphone and tablet, using these as the digital connection to the passenger has been growing in popularity, even in the turboprop space.
“The ability to easily install something cost-effectively and without the weight tax of a hardwired system makes turboprops a natural target for systems that deliver digital services over a captive wifi network,” Brown says. “And even better, portable wifi — whether battery-operated or utilising aircraft power – is a very credible digital platform that is fast, cost effective, flexible and capable.”
New hardware and software backbones enable digital operations — and open the door to future advances
Once the cost-benefit calculations have stacked up on the digital services side of the equation, the digital operations side also benefits, with these hardworking, multiple-daily-cycle aircraft able to reap the rewards of connectivity across flight operations, ground operations, maintenance, repair, overhaul and more.
While quantifying these benefits will depend on each individual airline — particularly in the turboprop space where operators vary wildly in size, geographical scope, network, cost structures and other factors — the assessment is increasingly coming back with a ‘yes’ to wireless systems.
“Hardware aside, the software platform too is so critical,” Brown emphasises, giving as an example an implementation of the company’s Blueview digital services platform with Qantas’ low-cost carrier Jetstar: “It’s the same Blueview platform delivered to customers on any flight, whether they’re on an aircraft with Airbus Airspace Link (OSP) providing the hardware infrastructure or one with a Bluebox Wow unit delivering it.”
Emerging technologies will make the case even stronger. New low earth orbit satellite constellations like OneWeb and Starlink require much smaller antennas that are very much more suitable for turboprops. Even for the geosynchronous earth orbit satellites, a new generation of smaller and lighter electronically steered antennas may make the difference between going fully digital and remaining mostly offline.
“Generally, I see the wider availability of connectivity as a real opportunity for rapid acceleration of the types of digital services we’ll see integrated,” Brown says, referring to the Blueview platform. “At the moment that development is advancing but still somewhat constrained: if a service can’t be delivered offline, then a discussion about possible integration doesn’t get off the ground, but where connectivity is available, or will be, we’ve had some really exciting service development projects.”
Author: John Walton
Published: 24 August 2023
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