With An Order Book To Install RAVE(TM) On 57 To 137 Aircraft, IMS Is Just Plain Busy!

At Aircraft Interiors in April, the lion’s share of pre-AIX announcements were seat-centric in nature, and when the sales announcements were being made, The IMS Company’s RAVE™ seemed to corner the market. So we checked in with the folks in Brea, California. While this may be a down market for some, what we found was a flurry of activity as the company is dealing with RAVE™ orders for some 55 aircraft, with installations targeted to start the later part of this year. But if this isn’t challenging enough, the number of orders—including all of the options—could more than double the backlog! And the company is now entering a phase that founder and CEO Joe Renton calls “managing growth.”

“The responsible management of growth is the welcome, yet challenging, byproduct of the market response to RAVE,” says Renton. “Developing a new system from scratch was hard and selling a new system is difficult. If you are fortunate, you then get to deal with the management of orders and subsequently the support of product. It is the collective daily management of all these elements that makes growth uniquely challenging.”

The preparations include staffing, certifications, materials and facilities. The company moved into its Brea facilities just three years ago with an eye toward future growth. And a good thing too, because the company has increased its staff by some 75 percent and nearly doubled its office space in the past 12 months. The team in Brea has also recently completed its AS9100 certification in support of its perpetual performance improvement commitment.  

IMS’ vice president sales and marketing, Harry Gray—who announced RAVE™ orders for Lufthansa German Airlines, airberlin, SriLankan, and Brussels Airlines—is still believed to have another three airline orders in his pocket. So what if everyone exercises all of their options and the number of aircraft jumps to 100—or even more? “We will be ready,” says Renton. So we guess that Harry will keep on selling, however, we doubt that he will miss his annual Pig Roast, coming soon. What you weren’t invited?

If you cannot live another day without a RAVE data sheet, here it is. If you want to order your RAVE system, contact Harry at 714.854.8663 – hgray@imsco-us.com.

Knutsford, Cheshire, UK, July 13, 2010 – IFE Services, a leading travel entertainment provider, today announced that it had reached agreement with Thomas Cook Airlines to supply 32 of its 44 aircraft in its UK fleet with the PlayStation® Portable (PSP®).
The agreement allows Thomas Cook Airlines to add one of the world’s best-selling and most popular hand-held entertainment consoles to its in-flight entertainment offering to passengers. All PSP®s provided by IFE Services will come pre-loaded with a selection of movies, television programmes, children’s shows and the latest PSP® video games.

Fully certified for use in-flight, the PSP® can be comfortably held by passengers or positioned on a seatback tray. It has a sleek, lightweight design, a high-resolution, widescreen TFT display and comes with up to 11 hours of battery life making it an ideal companion on most flights.

Ian Derbyshire, Chief Executive Officer at Thomas Cook UK & Ireland, said: “With the introduction of individual PSP®s on our short and medium haul flights this summer, passengers can have control over their own entertainment, which they can watch at their own leisure. We’ve selected a range of films, programmes and games to keep the whole family happy on their flights with us.”

To date, IFE Services has signed PSP® distribution deals with seven airlines and advanced negotiations are currently ongoing with several more.