SITA’s local presence, combined with reliable global service, provides the airline with flexibility

Montreal, Canada | October 4, 2017–Air Transat, Canada’s number one holiday travel airline, has turned to SITA to support its route development in airports across the Caribbean, South and Central America. A fast time to market is key to the airline’s success and SITA delivers communications network services at new destinations quickly.

Air Transat faces challenges to uniformly connect and equip its staff across all destinations. Regardless of where it flies, it must have reliable network connectivity to access its applications. Over the next three years, SITA will provide Air Transat with network connectivity in Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico and Panama.

Many smaller and low-cost airports do not have common-use equipment and hardware has to be provided by the airline. However, it is not easy to transport computers in and out of countries quickly or have support staff available immediately to service the equipment; it’s also costly to store equipment in the off-season when not needed. SITA will provide end-user computing services to manage this challenge, allowing Air Transat to add new seasonal destinations quickly and smoothly.

Martin Lachance, Director, IT Solutions, Air Transat, said: “SITA has delivered a solution tailored exactly to our business needs. This is a combination of SITA’s network connectivity with global presence and local support, simplified billing, and fast streamlined implementation across our ever-changing seasonal network. SITA’s uniform global service—driven by a comprehensive service level agreement with standardized equipment and processes—controls costs and simplifies billing, giving us the flexibility we demand in our business.”

SITA has solved both problems of equipping staff and providing connectivity wherever Air Transat flies. Its global presence at airports and relationships with local governments enabled SITA to provide a turnkey solution. This included everything from customs clearance of laptops; deployment of the equipment once on-site; remotely supporting the equipment; maintenance and repair; spares provision; decommissioning; storage in the off-season if needed; and Internet/network connectivity. SITA’s global team of engineers have specific air transport industry and end-user computing experience and knowledge that allows them to efficiently support the Air Transat team in every location.

Randy Pizzi, SITA President, Americas, said: “SITA is excited to partner with Air Transat to deliver services that support the flexibility this dynamic business requires. The combination of our end-user computing services and reliable network availability allows Air Transat to save time and control costs while ensuring high levels of service and site management.”

Air Transat is a Canadian leisure airline based in Montreal, Quebec, operating scheduled and charter flights that serve about 60 destinations in 26 countries. In 2016, Air Transat was named Best North American Leisure Airline for the fifth consecutive year by Skytrax. In 2017, the airline is celebrating its 30th anniversary in business and its 30th year as a SITA member.

We first heard about meshed aviation networks a few years ago but not much has happened in the build and test phase until now. In the past, and as far back as 2008, mesh networks have found use on the ground and in the air with the military. However, in the last couple of years, mesh networks have found a proposed place, specifically in aviation papers like this one. Interestingly, Wikipedia notes; “The 66-satellite Iridium constellation operates as a mesh network, with wireless links between adjacent satellites. Calls between two satellite phones are routed through the mesh, from one satellite to another across the constellation, without having to go through an earth station. This makes for a smaller travel distance for the signal, reducing latency, and also allows for the constellation to operate with far fewer earth stations than would be required for 66 traditional communications satellites.”
Now, the Airborne Wireless Network folks are targeting the communication to and from the ground, through moving aircraft paths… that is, the planes have antennas that talk to each other, as well as, to ground stations – look at it as a flexible, moving wireless network that does not use satellites, but rather, uses the airplane(s) as the communication nodes to ground stations. As the reported requirements for off-plane data increases, as well as the development failure prediction capability based on more data, communicating black box testing, and passengers and crew data usage goes up – another method to send it might be useful! The concept in our first story is the result of a lot of new technology brought about by new data handling capabilities, advanced antenna processing, flexible spectrum management and frequency-agile transmissions and importantly, software defined networking. While Airborne Wireless Network has kept a low profile about their operation, you are going to hear a lot about the technology, and a lot about their product in the future. Stay Tuned!

Airborne Wireless Network:
Airborne Wireless Network (the company) is pleased to announce that it has entered into a Memorandum Of Understanding with Kansas City-based Jet Midwest Group (Jet Midwest). It states that both parties have agreed to enter into a definitive agreement by September 30, 2016. The memorandum further states that Jet Midwest Group would be providing up to three Boeing 757-223 Jetliners to Airborne Wireless Network for its ‘proof of network concept’ and FAA certification testing. Two of these Boeing 757-223’s have tentatively been designated for the company’s use.
Once the aircraft have been fitted with Airborne Wireless’ equipment and ground-testing has been completed, the company plans to fly these commercial jets from Roswell, New Mexico to Kansas City, Missouri. According to the FAA, this will be a historic “first ever” flight of a meshed commercial airliner-based network. Their plan is for global service of real-time data performance developing a virtual airborne “worldwide web”. One of the advantages of an airplane-based is, of course, no space junk which is a big deal. The only hang-up is you have to get a lot of folks in the game with all their aircraft before enough coverage is available as a reliable connection service. If there are enough players, the advantages, however, result in multiple signal paths, a true “meshed network”, and no single point of failure. We are sure you can see the issues, especially since we are in the heyday of potential signal hacking but being some 30,000 feet above ‘bad guy’ signal sources may have value, not to mention the removal of ground-to-air and air-to-ground weather-related signal and distance losses. This is worth watching.

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GOODBYE JOE:
Last week, Boeing’s Father of the B747, Joe Sutter, passed away at 95. Mr. Sutter was involved with many planes that Boeing built like the B377, the “Dash 80”, B707, B720, B727, B737, and famously as the Father of the B747. He was a nice man and always had the time to say hello… goodbye Joe.

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AIN PRODUCT SURVEY CONGRATS!
AIN reports in aircraft cabin electronics this year that, Aircraft Cabin Systems came in second in their Product Report Survey. Gogo Business/Satcom Direct tied for first place. Additionally, Satcom Direct won for overall product reliability. Check the survey results out here.

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AIRBUS:
AIRBUS announced orders from VIETJET for 10 A321ceos and 10 A321neos and JETSTAR PACIFIC for 10 A320ceos; and MOU from VIETNAM AIRLINES for 10 more A350s. We also note that AIRBUS delivered 61 airliners (47 A320 Family, seven A330s, six A350s, and two A380) in August versus 44 (32 A320s, 10 A330s, two A380s) in August 2015. It has now delivered 400 some aircraft in 2016.

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THE DELTA MESS:
Delta has reported a $100 million loss from those 2300 lost flights last month, which was blamed on a bad router and data backup capability. Wow, that’s an expensive router! Check out the full story.

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AIX ASIA:
From the folks at Aircraft Interiors Expo Asia we get this bit of info about the show – “AIX Asia will welcome more than 50 exhibitors across seating, onboard retail, passenger comfort and more, including Geven, ZIM and Mirus Aircraft Seating. We are co-located with the Future Travel Experience Asia EXPO and the APEX EXPO, bringing together over 150 exhibitors to Singapore this year and creating the airline industry’s biggest fall event for the passenger experience industry.” IFExpress will be there October 24 – 27, 2016 and we hope you will too. We should also note that while the Zika virus has now infected 151 individuals in Singapore, the first locally-transmitted Zika infection was reported this past Saturday but most cases reported are from foreigners. “We have been tracking Zika for a while now, and knew it was only a matter of time before it reached Singapore,” Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong posted on his Facebook page. “Our best defense is to eradicate mosquitoes and destroy breeding habitats, all over Singapore.” Singapore is the only Asian country with active transmission of the mosquito-borne Zika virus. We are bringing our Sawyer Picardin (Consumer Reports highest rated insect repellent – look it up.

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VARIOUS LINKS WORTH YOUR TIME:
1. How to Keep Your Mac or iPhone Secure When Traveling Overseas | The Mac Security Blog
2. FAA Tightens Safeguards on Lithium Batteries on Airplanes – WSJ
3. Why You Should Drink Milk Before A Road Trip
4. Long TSA Delays Force Airports To Hire Private Security Contractors – Slashdot
5. ViaSat (VSAT), Eutelsat Receive New Contract in Europe
6. The Ultimate Guide to Travel Plugs
7. Travel hacks to avoid fees for Wi-Fi, extra legroom

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auf Wiedersehen AXEL!
“As of today I will go on a sabbatical leave! Still unbelievable for me, but after a very long time at TriaGnoSys and Zii, I will give up work responsibility, and enjoy various other activities, family and friends, which I gave too low focus in the past.  So I am leaving with a smile in one eye and a tear in the other.  Looking forward to seeing you soon again, take care, Axel”