The Inflight Connectivity Conundrum

While on an Alitalia flight from NY to Rome last month, I made a decision to require an opportunity from my grinding, persistent insomnia (I cannot sleep on planes for whatever reason) to see out the in-flight connectivity offerings. At that time, within the flight, we were about one thousand miles southwest of Iceland and well into the zone that was referred to as the “Mid-Atlantic Gap” during war II. During the war, that term described a neighborhood within the North Atlantic that was beyond the range of land-based aircraft wont to protect Allied shipping lanes. More recently, beginning in 2005 approximately, this term was employed by seasoned international travelers to explain the whole four or five-hour journey over the Atlantic where there was no ground-to-air connectivity for the airline passenger. Now, just a couple of short years later, as I connected my devices to Alitalia’s WiFi (for a price of 40 Euros), I marveled over the dramatic improvements in air-to-satellite coverage, speeds, and accuracy offered by the airlines and their satellite partners.

The fact is that each one consumer expects – and regularly demands – some kind of WiFi connectivity option nowadays, no matter where they'll be: during a cafe, at a park, or on an airplane that's 35,000 feet within the air. Further, these customers own multiple PEDs (Portable Electronic Devices) with apps that have progressively insatiable data appetites. And here is another emerging trend: American consumers expect that WiFi connectivity choice to be free or very nearly free. Interestingly, European consumers still expect to pay a premium for WiFi connectivity, but even that's slowly changing although Europeans still gleefully expect to buy using public restrooms, which is unprecedented in America lately.

For most businesses, this consumer expectation can usually be met with a really modest investment. For an airline, however, the investment required is often within the millions – or many millions, depending upon the dimensions and complexity of the aircraft fleet – and therefore the risk suddenly rockets into the stratosphere seeing that the typical “take rate” for consumer-paid in-flight WiFi approach is about six percent, meaning that on an aircraft with 175 passengers only 10.5 of them can pay for the service. 

Meanwhile, the info demands of the passenger are exponentially increasing, and saturated aircraft bandwidths are causing some unfortunate customer service problems, many of which are luridly covered by the media

These are some sobering numbers because most of the airplanes in commission today are going to be enjoying their retirement years within the Arizona boneyard by the time that ROI becomes positive. On the opposite hand, when in-flight WiFi is obtainable as a complimentary service the “take rate” is in more than 100 percent (this is feasible because each passenger can have two or more PEDs they're connecting), and therefore the bandwidth, especially with ground-to-air systems, can quickly become saturated thus leading to a poor user experience.

While we've our share of business travelers, Sun Country Airlines maybe a leisure and charter airline with a really loyal customer base that chooses us due to the general experience. we provide a high level of in-cabin and ground service to our passengers, and while we've competitors, of course, we don’t have a competitor that has our very same offerings. So, when the heavy-hitters first starting offering in-flight WiFi a couple of years ago, we knew that Sun Country would eventually need to offer it also at some point.

Sun Country has in some ways benefitted from not entering the inflight WiFi connectivity arena too early. While there are clearly advantages to being the primary one to the market with an innovative offering, these advantages are often short-lived and sometimes become disadvantages. For instance, several of the massive airlines that invested early are now facing the unpleasant and expensive prospect of re-equipping their large fleets with newer inflight WiFi components because the advances in satellite bandwidth and speeds have rapidly outpaced the capacity of the older onboard physical devices, which aren't backward-compatible. Meanwhile, the info demands of the passenger are exponentially increasing, and saturated aircraft bandwidths are causing some unfortunate customer service problems, many of which are luridly covered by the media. Additionally, the initial investment costs for an airline to “get into the connectivity game” have dropped dramatically (almost one-half just over the past three years) as more suppliers have entered the market to take share with better products and services.

Sun Country has also been ready to learn from the trailblazers and therefore the ever-evolving consumer behavior with this technology and offers. The assertion for a few at Sun Country has traditionally been: “We don’t need inflight WiFi because we are a leisure airline.” I probably would have agreed thereupon statement five years ago. Today, however, we all know that the majority employees are expected to be connected to figure most – if not all – of the time, no matter whether or not they're within the office, at home, or thousands of miles away enjoying a very nice Caribbean vacation. this suggests that leisure travelers, a bit like business travelers, are increasingly bringing not only their work but also their entertainment with them everywhere they are going on their PEDs and that they are insisting on more connectivity with higher bandwidths and speeds. The hypothetical line that separated the requirements of the leisure and traveler is becoming more and more blurred.

Sun Country will complete this interesting journey called inflight WiFi very soon. However, before we reach that destination there are some formidable obstacles that need to be overcome, as I even have indicated here. But I feel the most questions for Sun Country because it relates to inflight WiFi, is not any longer “why?” but is instead “how?”

Check Out Review Of CIOReview : Crunchbase, Glassdoor

Check This Out : CIOReview Overview, Muckrack