APEX EXPO, Portland, Oregon | September 29, 2015– Zodiac Aerospace’s Zodiac Inflight Innovations’ RAVE™ Centric IFEC is now a linefit option on the Airbus A350 XWB. “This represents a key milestone in our company growth strategy enabling Zodiac Inflight Innovations, to serve our airline customers with complete IFEC offerings, said, Matt Smith Zodiac Inflight Innovations, CEO.”
Smith adds “Now our Inflight Entertainment solutions are approved as line fit on A350 XWB and A330 Long Range, coupled with the fact that Zodiac Zodiac Rave Broadband connectivity product was also granted offerability on A350 XWB, clearly shows we are on the right path.”
“This is great news for Zodiac Inflight Innovations, our innovative IFEC is now line fit offerable on the A350 XWB,” said Larry Girard, Executive Vice President at Zodiac Inflight Innovations. “But what’s more important, it is now readily available for airlines. For too long, there has been very limited choice when it comes to IFEC. We have taken a fresh look at the design of IFEC and are offering airlines a lower cost choice without compromising reliability or features; we already know airlines – and their passengers – like it.”
Twenty five airlines around the world with over 200 aircraft in service are already using Zii Inflight Entertainment which includes our award winning RAVE Centric AVOD system and our latest RAVE Wireless streaming entertainment system.
RAVE™ Centric is an embedded modular inflight entertainment system. It provides airlines with a wide range of choices for different cabins including screen size, passenger control units. In addition, each seat is independent, so a failure in one seat will not impact another. More importantly, the patented dockable seat display means the crew can quickly replace the seat display during the flight.
“This is the complete IFEC product,” continued Girard. “RAVE™ Centric and RAVE Wireless provides passengers with app-based browsing for on-demand movies, TV shows, music, radio and a moving map. Capacitive touch, high resolution screens are embedded in the seats and the intuitive Graphical User Interface mirrors the usability everyone is used to with smartphones and tablets. The integrated USB charger can be used to power personal electronic devices, which can be used as a second screen and even a passenger control device.”
“Now that RAVE™ Centric is a catalogue option on the A350 XWB, we fully anticipate more and more airlines will take advantage of our highly innovative technology,” concluded Girard.
RAVE™ Centric’s lightweight design and low power requirements greatly reduce airlines’ fuel costs, allowing Zodiac Inflight Innovations to maintain a price tag that all airlines can celebrate.
Zodiac Inflight Innovations at AIX was all smiles this year, and why not? Rod Farley’s team of Larry Girard and Harry Gray has chalked up some 26 new airlines for RAVE the past couple years by offering a product with one of the best screen image qualities we have ever seen on a seatback unit. We are sure price is also another feature and that makes airlines say “yes” to RAVE. The Zodiac Inflight Innovations Team has brought Mr. RAVE along for a few years now and they now have stand alone and integrated hardware such as those with the TriaGnoSys products like RAVE Wireless. But lets start at the beginning: firstly we should point out that RAVE comes in 3 flavors – RAVE CENTRIC (the seatback version), RAVE WIRELESS (the service for your portable entertainment device), and RAVE CELLULAR (the service for your phone). Secondly, and before we forget, RAVE came about as a business strategy – Reliable, Affordable, and Very Easy. From what we have heard from airlines, the products are working in aircraft “as advertised.”
Harry Gray told us that, “Our customers are consistently very happy with RAVE CENTRIC. Not only are we signing up more new airline customers, but existing customers want to extend our IFEC solutions across their fleets.”
Let’s look at all three in a little more detail. The data sheets from the Zodiac Inflight Innovations folks state: “Now airlines can choose from multiple features and capabilities to keep their passengers entertained and engaged during flight. Our product line provides our customers with a modular concept that can be tailored to each airlines needs, making it “very easy” for them to pick and choose which features are most important to them and their passengers.” The 3 product lines can be used on aircraft singularly or in a “mix & match” approach. This makes the IFEC solution flexible and allows for a solution on an airline with one-hour flights to differ from an International flight that could include all three.
RAVE CENTRIC is the headliner that provides inseat/overhead entertainment screens all connected via Ethernet throughout the cabin. This includes crew panel screens, which are interchangeable with the passenger screens of the same size. The entertainment content can be updated daily via an SD Card or USB drive by the crew while the built-in cell modem handles airline operational data offloads from the IFE system. Theatrical content loads are delivered to each seat via their content loader (System Control Unit) and can take place on the ground and even in the background during flight. Both Airbus and Boeing aircraft are flying with RAVE CENTRIC and airlines like the simple addition of one LRU in each seat for both installation ease and testing and replacement ease. Reliability is enhanced in the stand-alone in-seat units by the use of solid state memory and this is one of the reasons over 100 planes now are flying with this system and is a past Crystal Cabin Award winner. And yes, RAVE is now line fit offerable as well.
Two things stood out in the seatback system for us: USB charging available in each of the seatback displays and the INCREDIBLE quality of the screen displays. The in-seat HD displays, available in 17”, 15”, 12” and 9”, all have SD memory cards. Larry Girard told IFExpess, “We built in new intuitive screen controls that are more “swipe driven” and with our slide-up panel, pull down menus, and slide button controls, we mimic mainstream devices, which is one of our goals.” Aside from the new intuitive touch screen interface there’s a wireless option that we will talk about later.
The System Control Unit has a lot going for it, just look at some of the features:
- A single major LRU in the head-end
- Under 50 watts and 3.5kg weight
- 12 Terabyte capacity with built-in “load & go” content loading, even during flight
- Wireless data transfers at the gate
- Broadcast Moving Map (option)
- Supports all aircraft standard interfaces for PSS, PA, VA, Connecting Gate, etc.
- Qualified to DO-160 requirements
Let’s now move on to RAVE WIRELESS, available today. An airline that features short / medium haul operations or has customers who demand personal device entertainment will find RAVE WIRELESS a solution looking for users. This would be a good place to mention that this RAVE solution has a bit of development history combined in its background, as TriaGnoSys brought a lot of connectivity history to the party when Zodiac Aerospace purchased the company in September 2013. From an operational point of view, no app is required so users don’t have to download any application before the flight – Wi-Fi is streamed via an open network. This can also be pass-code protected for a pay per access or pay per view option. As a browser based connectivity device, the system allows any PED with Safari, Chrome, Opera, Firefox, (and so on) to be up and running with one URL entry. We asked about equipment requirements for a 200-passenger plane and 3 WAPS will fill the bill. The system shuts down automatically when wheels touch the ground. We understand that RAVE WIRELESS has a couple customers already and a fleet of aircraft goes into service this month.
RAVE CENTRIC and RAVE WIRELESS can also work together to enable passengers to use dual screens. Most obviously, they can have both a film showing on one screen and the Internet – social media, for example – running on the other. But what Zodiac Inflight Innovations has done in addition is to incorporate pairing, so both screens work together. That means passengers can swipe content from one screen to the other, and back again. It is just like having two linked screens on your desk.
Lastly we should mention a bit about RAVE CELLULAR, the international voice, SMS, and Data services provided through connectivity service providers, with billing, as with international roaming, coming though each passenger’s home mobile network operator. From a hardware perspective:
- CCU (Communication Control Unit) hardware is integrated with RAVE Cellular, RAVE Broadband, and RAVE Wireless in one cost effective LRU weighing approximately 5kg
- Antenna – leaky line or dipole antennas are required in-plane
- NCU (Network Control Unit) creates a usable airborne environment for GSM voice and data services
- CCP (Cabin Crew Panel) provides cabin crew and maintenance control functions as well as system and BIT status
This solution pretty much fits the bill for any airline in the world wishing IFE and/or connectivity and the Zodiac Inflight Innovations RAVE family boasts enough aircraft installations to call them one of the IFE contenders in the race to fill space with IFEC!
Brea, CA | April 24, 2014– Air Transat will soon become the world’s first airline to offer RAVE™ Wireless, Zodiac Inflight Innovations’ ground-breaking content streaming technology. Passengers flying on Canada’s leading holiday travel airline will be able to stream movies, TV shows, music and moving maps directly to their own smartphones, tablets and laptops.
RAVE Wireless will be retrofitted on Air Transat’s fleet of nine A310-300 aircraft. Air Transat is a long-standing customer of Zodiac Inflight Innovations (Zii), with RAVE™ embedded IFE being installed on the A310 fleet in business class, as well as on the airline’s A330 fleet throughout the aircraft.
“Our embedded IFE has been very popular with our passengers for several years,” said Jon Turner of Air Transat. “With the introduction of wireless streaming, we are taking our cabin service to a new level. This is an exciting development and we are very pleased that Air Transat is one of the first airlines in the world to provide content streaming.”
The technology behind RAVE™ Wireless was developed by TriaGnoSys, the expert in communications technology for the aviation industry, which was acquired by Zii in September 2013. That acquisition added connectivity to Zii’s IFE offering, meaning Zii provides the full range of IFEC technology.
“We have a very strong relationship with Air Transat and we are very pleased it will be our launch customer for RAVE Wireless,” said Harry Gray, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Zodiac Inflight Innovations. “This marks not only a step-change for Zii, but also for the whole industry. Passengers want on-demand content on their own personal electronic devices, mirroring their behavior on the ground. There is no question that wireless streaming is a part of the future of IFE for specific market segments.”
RAVE™ Wireless uses wireless access points (WAPs) to create an onboard wireless network for content distribution. Importantly, RAVE embedded IFE™ and RAVE™ Wireless can be connected to enable passengers to use two screens – the seat-back screen and their own PED – simultaneously. It includes the ability to extend content across both screens, just as people can do with dual screens at home and in the office.
'Future–proofing' the IFE installation means providing an onboard network with sufficient bandwidth that the airline will never have to tear apart their airplane to re-wire to install upgrades. Fiber-to-the-Seat™ provides a fiber optics network running at a gigabit per second – High-definition video is only the beginning – who knows what the hot, killer apps will be 10-20 years from now?!”