It’s That Time Again!
Time to get your reservations for the WAEA Conference & Exhibition – the 30th year of the oldest Inflight Entertainment conference. The show runs from October 5 thru the 8th in Palm Springs, CA,You can download a brochure from WAEA.org with all the details but we thought you should know of a few changes. For one, the educational sessions will only run one day, Monday, Oct. 5th. Be sure not to miss the education day because these topics will put a lot of the current technology initiatives into focus: Sessions will cover : who’s doing what in airplane trials, inflight accessibility, ancillary revenues of the connected aircraft, improving operational efficiencies onboard, the economic climate of IFE today and in the future, using the latest technology to offer new applications, the future of IFE, case studies of usage statistics, how to use reliability measurements, and much more…!
Registration coincides with the sessions with the Avion Awards…the last item on the work agenda followed by the usual poolside reception. There will also be Technical Education Sessions on Tuesday and Thursday. Be sure not to miss the Single Focus Workshop Review in one of these sessions because they will summarize the excellent wireless session in Everett this past July. We have gotten calls asking if the walk-in policy has changed to that of the Aircraft Interiors Conference. Nope! And speaking of AI, they will not be co-located with the WAEA Conference this year…you will have to wait till next year!
On a different tack, there has been a lot of chin music lately on inflight internet security. The article (linked below) is particularly interesting because the writer identifies an attack vulnerability from a Link Layer hack called “Man In The Middle”. While we do not pretend to be hack experts, the problem stems from non-encrypted communication between clients and the wireless server. Sources tell us that “packet sniffer” software can inject malicious code into Wi-fi data streams even VPN level communications. And speaking of Wi-fi, here is a link to a recent WSJ article on the take-up of recent installations on aircraft.
In-flight entertainment and related technologies, such as onboard Internet access, are critically important to the passengers I speak with every day. An authoritative resource about the latest developments in the in-flight entertainment industry will lead to better products and happier customers.”