This may not directly relate to IFE; however, the lesson will.

While visiting the Astronics booth at AIX, we were surprised to see a new technology flashlight, designed for commercial aircraft. You know them as the flashlight-looking-things-that-blink, usually attached to bulkheads near aircraft exits and in crew stations. As an FAA approved device, they are now much higher tech than their earlier cousins so we asked Astronics why they developed new flashlights and why they cost over $100 bucks? It turns out that there is quite a story here and you know how we like stories!

Carl Hooper, Business Development, Astronics/DME told us that while all the FAA criteria was folded into the design along with LED’s and special batteries that hold a charge for 5 years there was another, bigger reason why airlines want to consider using them – payback! “It’s weight that is at issue here,” said Hooper. “These babies weigh one pound less than earlier technology and that results in less fuel burned.” It turns out that he is very correct. Back in the early 90′s, this writer saw a Boeing report on the cost of carrying an additional pound of weight. By adding fuel burn, landing fee’s based on weight, wheels, tires, and brake expenses; the number at that time amounted for a yearly cost of around $200/pound, in average service. Please also note that Jet A was less than $1.00/gallon at the time. Today, with airplane kerosene costing around $3.23/gallon we heard numbers like $200/pound per year up to $1000 per year – no wonder they are charging for bags.

The bottom line here is simple, if an airline swaps out their existing flashlights, they get payback in 6 months to a year. Here is a link to an Astronics data sheet on the flashlights and feel free to submit a weight reduction suggestion to the boss. You might get a raise!

And now for something completely different…

Have you ever heard of SCARLETT group? We stumbled upon this interesting booth at AIX. The 39 organization consortium from 16 countries – primarily european in nature – is setting about to develop scalable, reconfigurable airborne electronic platforms and tools. The picture of the booth demo was of a data-over-power (Ethernet) and caught our attention because, while clearly avionics, it was an IFE item. We checked out the website and you can too at but it is limited in scope and definition. In their brochure, they define their scope better: “The concept of the SCARLETT project is based on shared analysis made by the European Aerospace Community which supports the need to carry out research leading to a conceptual breakthrough in IMA1G (Integrated Modular Avionics) in order to define a scalable, reconfigurable fault tolerant driven and secure new avionics platform, namely DME: Distributed Modular Electronics.” In other words, the consortium wants to develop avionics modules that can be easily reconfigured or scaled to do a multitude of different functions on the airplane. Wow, IFE sure fits in this potential category.

A couple of additional interesting items – SCARLETT developed hardware is already flying on the A380 and A400M and the project is funded under the European Seventh Framework Programme. Stay Tuned on this one.