• The Un-carrier takes the worry out of summer travel to the No.1 overseas destination, with unlimited high-speed data across all of Europe all summer long—at absolutely no extra cost
• Stateside travelers, including Verizon and AT&T customers #GetThanked too with a free, full hour of Gogo Wi-Fi on ALL flights this weekend

Bellevue, WA | June 23, 2016– T-Mobile just showed again why it is the Official Sponsor of Summer.* The Un-carrier today announced it’s unleashing summer travel, giving customers unlimited high-speed data, up to 4G LTE speeds, throughout Europe all summer long. But, of course, T-Mobile didn’t stop there. For those travelling this weekend, T-Mobile announced it’s giving absolutely everyone – including Verizon and AT&T customers who never get thanked by their carrier – a full, free hour of Wi-Fi on all Gogo-equipped domestic flights—just to show everyone what it feels like to #GetThanked with the Un-carrier.

On top of that, T-Mobile today announced that Un-carrier customers can roam worry-free in Belize starting July 1st. Belize is joining the long list of 140+ countries and destinations where Simple Choice customers get unlimited data and texting and low, flat-rate calling while travelling abroad.

“The carriers see your summer trip as the perfect occasion to slam you with insane international roaming charges. When you travel with the Un-carrier, you’ll never come home to surprise overages or crazy fees,” said John Legere, president and CEO of T-Mobile. “Travel with T-Mobile, and you can use your phone the way you want to without thinking twice! Share every fantastic moment and don’t pay a penny more for your data!”

Cut Loose and Stay Connected this Summer in Europe
Far and away the single most popular overseas travel destination every summer is Europe, where more than 2.5 million Americans are expected to vacation this summer. So, starting July 1st all the way through August 31st, T-Mobile’s giving Simple Choice customers unlimited high-speed data across all of Europe** – all at absolutely no additional cost – so you can share, Skype, snap and scope every moment of your European holiday. Customers get the highest available data speeds wherever they travel across the continent. And, as always, texting is free around the globe with T-Mobile, and calls are just 20 cents a minute throughout Europe and a host of other destinations.

That couldn’t be more different than the carriers’ approach to tax and toll everything you do with your phone outside the country. For example, if a Verizon customer used their phone normally during a two-week holiday in Rome, they could come home to upwards of $2,730 in international roaming fees.

If you travel with T-Mobile, your phone just works – exactly like it should – at exactly $0 extra for unlimited data and texting. And the best part? Customers don’t have to lift a finger to get these Un-carrier benefits. All of which makes T-Mobile the only choice for summer travel.

This Weekend, Everybody Flies Like a T-Mobile Customer
Just a few weeks after unveiling Un-carrier 11, an industry-rocking move dedicated to thanking customers, the Un-carrier’s now offering everyone a chance to #GetThanked like a T-Mobile customer. The millions of Americans expected to fly this weekend can get a taste of what it means to be part of the Un-carrier—even those long-abused AT&T and Verizon customers.

Starting this Friday, June 24 through Sunday, June 26, passengers on any domestic flight with Gogo service can automatically get one free hour of Wi-Fi on their smartphone, courtesy T-Mobile. That’s a free full hour coming and going on every flight with Gogo service—more than 33,000 flights this weekend alone!

“We want to show everybody what it feels like to #GetThanked and travel like a T-Mobile customer!” said Legere.

While this offer for everyone flying this weekend ends Sunday at 11:00pm ET, T-Mobile customers will always enjoy free messaging and texting all flight long, plus a full free hour of Gogo Wi-Fi on your smartphone on all Gogo-equipped domestic flights, courtesy the Un-Carrier. For more information on what it’s like flying with T-Mobile, visit www.t-mobile.com/offer/free-in-flight-wifi-texting-uncarrier.

Belize Completes the Picture for South & Central America
Finally, for the tens of thousands of Americans who travel each year to Belize to enjoy its natural beauty and pristine beaches, T-Mobile also announced that Belize is will be part of Simple Global starting July 1st. Meaning T-Mobile customers can travel to all 20 countries in South & Central America – from the tip of Patagonia in Chile to that scuba spot in Belize – and never have to worry about data roaming or texting charges.

With Simple Global, which launched in 2013, T-Mobile Simple Choice customers get unlimited data and texting and low, flat-rate calling for just 20 cents a minute in over 140 countries and destinations around the world.

For more information about travelling with T-Mobile, check out http://www.t-mobile.com/optional-services/roaming.html.

Last year we wrote in our first issue: “Happy New Year to our readers and thank you for another year of IFE change and growth. We are always excited to write up our predictions, in fact, we have been researching for a couple of weeks now to bring you the latest in prediction news. Based on technology change, we are in for a ride this year, and beyond. Everything from drones to privacy is at risk to become a new item in 2015, and as we move into the world of change, we hope you find our view a bit different… and a bit useful.” The sentiment still holds so let’s get started on 2016. Here are a few of the big market and changes that we might see (or need) in the techno-world to come with aviation as our focus.

Messaging:
While 2016 may have a few techno-changes from 2015 and summary numbers differ, we are are riding the same messaging train! Since technology and media have grown so much (at least in the US) folks are spending more time on it than sleep or work (Business Insider), there appears to be plenty of opportunity time for messaging (Facebook, Twitter, and the like) but messaging will be even bigger. If you don’t believe it, just watch the ‘head down time’ at a public function where time is spent on devices – it’s less invasive and non interruptive.

Why is this a boom time for messaging, you might ask? The answer must lie in new, portable communication technology for one. If, as some writers predict, we spend over half of our waking day with media and technology, and because the devices and connectivity mediums are there, plain and simple, we will text. From a broader perspective, time on major digital activities will increase and has done so for each year for the last 5 years. To a greater extent, these behaviors are clearly a dominating trend and will continue to grow for the foreseeable future. Further, as folks ‘cut’ their cable TV, products are rising up in the wireless world to support streaming TV via the Internet for portable devices. Check out this FierceCable article for more information on this subject.

On aircraft, we also expect to see this increase, after all some 97% of passengers (notes SITA) have devices with Facebook Messenger, What’s App, and WeChat. These devices (and apps) and limited connectivity channels are there, all we need are more lower price solutions (free or flat fee)… and yes, there are a few on the horizon and we will discuss them this year, but we digress for now. If anything will be a big deal in inflight lifestyle changes, it will be more messaging!

Audio:
From an audio perspective, our daily life is a good predictor of what we want, and will do, on airplanes. Streaming audio is not new on the ground, with some predictors noting 4 hours of each day in that pursuit. On planes it is usually a ‘canned’ experience because connectivity to the ground is not cheap. However, with the demand of services like google Play, Amazon, MP3, NPR, Apple Music, Spotify and many more, there may be a future for advertised, real-time, streaming… if for no other reason than news. Today it’s the ‘under 17’ that spend the most streaming time but they do get older and will replace the ‘over 55’ who rely mostly on AM/FM – something to think about for your next IFE system.

Bags/Baggage:
Perhaps the past year has been better (data not out yet), but in the previous year (2014), the passenger count that lost a bag reached 24.1 million and, we note, the trend has been dropping (2007 – 18.9 lost bags per thousand pax, down 61.3% to 2014 – 7.3 lost bags per thousand pax). However with increasing load factors, increased seating and increasing traffic, it will be a real challenge for airlines to keep up. In 2014 it cost the airlines over $2 Billion for mishandled bags so the airlines are ahead of the $4.22 Billion in 2007. We also note that half of the issues were caused by transfer mishandling. Perhaps the new personal Bluetooth and Wi-Fi bag finders in conjunction with the new self bag tag programs, and the eventual electronic bag-tag programs (NFC and RFID) will reduce the loss even further in 2016. In fact, SITA has been making inroads with their BagManager baggage tracking service in 2015 and we anticipate this feature to take off in 2016.

Beacons:
We have shown a number of beacon devices in pictures from the IFE trade shows but basically we are talking about mobile location, mobile intelligence or mobile sales communication devices. These are small battery free or line powered devices that communicate with your device over Bluetooth (4.1) and Wi-Fi. The folks at SITA have been developing a lot of airport related solutions and it remains to be seen when they will come aboard planes. Developed at Apple, the iBeacon Registry is their effort to get this technology started in airports and here are their services: It allows beacon owners (airlines, airports or 3rd parties) to manage their beacon infrastructure and track where they are placed in an airport. The technology enables airports to monitor beacon deployment to prevent radio interference with existing Wi-Fi access points. It provides beacons owners with a simple mechanism to set the ‘meta-data’ associated with beacons. Also, it has an API for app developers who want to use these beacons for developing travel and other related apps. Notes SITA: “The aims of the registry are to promote the use of beacons in the Air Transport Industry and reduce the cost and complexity of deployment. This can be achieved with the following design goals:

• Promote shared beacon infrastructure to reduce cost and complexity of deployment.
• Introduce standard beacon types and data definition to encourage reuse.
• Provide a simple to use API to discover beacons and get meta-data about beacons.
• Provide tools to airport operators and beacon owners to visualize and track beacons.
• Be vendor agnostic – the service should work with beacons from any vendor.”

Furthermore, ABI Research notes: “Research data shows that, from a beacon shipment perspective, most vendors are shipping multiple contracts in the tens of thousands. This is a major upgrade from 2014, indicating that a lot of retailers are ramping up to deploy in 2016. Although not public yet, several original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) completed funding rounds, which will enable them to grow in 2016. Sensoro is emerging as a major market player, with more than 110,000 beacons deployed in China and some major orders lined up for 2016.”

More on Beacons here

Security:
This topic is massive and we will cover it for many times to come but we wanted to share one thought from an article in informationsecurotybuzz.com – titled: Human Behavior as the Biggest Threat to Company Security. “People were reported to be ‘almost universally’ the biggest weakness in information security, ahead of technology and processes. Of the respondents that reported to have an insider threat or policy, 70% offer employee training to minimize risk.” “The company employs intelligence teams that study different aspects of communications, user activity, social media, suspicious activity and other details,” said one respondent. “We’re seeing a lot more hands-on training, employee monitoring, and testing to address the issue,” said Ari Kaplan, security researcher. In fact, this human focused trend will be the number one item at this year’s CES in Las Vegas, the show of new things: “#1 Say Goodbye to Cool, Hello to Security and Safety. At CES we have come to expect the latest new shiny gadgets. There will be plenty of those this year, but that will not be the show’s main theme. The prevailing stories will center on security, safety and health services that help consumers in their daily lives.” The world is changing and aviation will be focused on this subject this year. Just consider how many folks touch technology that plugs into planes!

VR:
Don’t get too excited about virtual reality for aircraft applications. In fact, here is the view from Rick Merritt in EE Times who seems to agree: “Some people will claim virtual and augmented reality will be the next big thing in the run up to the debut of a handful of major platforms in the spring. But by fall the heat will start to fade as consumers, chilled by their high price tags and underwhelming performance, give a pass on them as gifts for Xmas 2016.” Some airlines have been flirting with the concept of VR for a number of years and have even featured the technology in their airline lounges, but we believe this technology has a long way to go before it can migrate successfully to the airborne environment, especially if motion sickness is taken into consideration!

Other:
We probably don’t need to say it but economy class will get more crowded, competition will drop air fares as competition ‘crams’ up… possibly a new ‘mini or micro’ class, there should be more mergers as more airlines take on the Delta World concept, deals and freebies will exist for the frequent fliers while the rest of the travelers will pretty much just exist inflight (if that’s possible), you will need better pre-boarding ID, Airbnb and Uber concepts will tempt a new US airline concept but the idea will be killed (this is a tough one in the US), and in the end VR may be needed after all to blunt the reality of coach class.

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NEWS

Women In Aviation Intl: Tracey Curtis-Taylor successfully completed her United Kingdom to Australia flight on January 1, 2016, recreating a pioneering 1930 solo flight by Amy Johnson. Tracey departed Farnborough airport on October 1, 2015, on her solo flight in a 1942 Boeing Stearman named the Spirit of Artemis. The flight covered 13,000 miles, including 50 legs, crossing 23 countries. Tracey is a keynote speaker at the 2016 International Women in Aviation Conference March 10-12 in Nashville, TN at the Friday morning general session, expected to be attended by nearly 4,500 participants.

IFPL just announced the delivery of a one millionth peripheral to Panasonic Avionics (see the News Releases section for the full story).

We told you so…

Lastly, we are working on a few surprises for 2016, but more on this later…