South African airline passengers will soon be able to access the Internet in flight as the South African Civil Aviation Authority gives approval for Wi-Fi to be installed on commercial aircraft.
Yesterday service provider WirelessG announced that the SACAA had approved WirelessG and US partner Row 44’s application, allowing the company to provide its G-Connect broadband services aboard commercial South African aircraft.
“Although we still await quality assurance of the final installation, the CAA is proud to announce its consent for the use of this technology in South Africa especially as it is a South African company that will exclusively offer the service,” said Subash Devkaran, Senior Manager: Aircraft Certification at the SACAA.
WirelessG submitted its application for in-flight Internet earlier in the year and said the service would be available as soon as April. Earlier this year, Mango Airlines announced it was going to offer Internet connectivity onboard for its Johannesburg and Cape Town routes from May 1. However, this project did not take off as planned.
Now Mango expects to offer in-flight Internet early next year. WirelessG CEO Carel van der Merwe said that the equipment would be ordered within the next few weeks and it would take 14 weeks to receive the hardware from the manufacturer and would require another six days per aircraft to install.
According to the Daily Maverick, Mango will fly six aircraft with on-board Wi-Fi access, but other airlines will follow suit and WirelessG is currently negotiating with another two domestic carriers.
WirelessG said that the CAA’s approval of WirelessG’s in-flight Wi-Fi services was approved in a matter of weeks, following the safety endorsement and issuing of a supplemental type certificate (STC) release from Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) in the United States and the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) to equip 737-800 series commercial aircraft and operate Wi-Fi services.
“Given the fact that it was an extensive process to get the technology approved by various authorities, this consent by the CAA can be seen as the most critical. It finally provides certainty and credibility to all stakeholders involved,” van der Merwe said. “The WirelessG in-flight initiative became a critical success factor in our long term strategy that was already initiated in 2008. The launch of in-flight Wi-Fi will solidify our position as a unique broadband provider in the South African market.”
Van der Merwe believes that 67% of the passenger target market will use in-flight services. Earlier in the year he said that in-flight Internet would be a major breakthrough in terms of convenience, productivity, entertainment and advantages of having communication in general. He said this would benefit more than 19 million local airline passengers.
“SA is a country with a device penetration rate of more than 100% and broadband take-up grows more than 30% per annum. In-flight Wi-Fi is the missing link in telecommunications,” he said.
Using Fli G-Connect will be the same as picking up a Wi-Fi signal from anywhere else, with speeds consistent with the normal Wireless G Wi-Fi hotspot experience. Either a voucher is purchased or a customer puts in existing G-Connect account details. The service will be cheaper for G-Connect customers, who would also be able to take unused bandwidth with them. Using in-flight wireless should cost around R50 for an average domestic flight. “We want to make it cheaper than prepaid 3G because we’re looking for the same kind of take up,” van der Merwe said.
Wireless G said that on-board connectivity is a common request from airline passengers, and that 95% of frequent fliers in the United States agree with the statement that in-flight Wi-Fi is “the best thing airlines have done” in the last three years. 50% of business travellers take Wi-Fi enabled flights to be “reachable” during business hours, WirelessG said.
According to Wakefield Research and the Wi-Fi Alliance, Wi-Fi has become a major decision-factor in frequent fliers’ choosing of airlines. 76% of frequent fliers would change their airline to have in-flight Wi-Fi. 55% of them would change their flight by a full day to have it. And another 71% of frequent fliers would prefer Wi-Fi access rather than meal service.
On Virgin America flights 10-15% of passengers pay for in-flight Internet and on transcontinental flights up to a quarter of passengers make use of the service, Wireless G said. Due to shorter flights within South Africa, early models show a 15% take-up rate will be critical.
The technology uses a low-profile antenna, four compact line replaceable units, a server management unit, a high power amplifier, an antenna control unit and a modem data unit on each equipped aircraft.
To deliver a WiFi signal, one or more wireless access units will also need to be placed in the aircraft.
The safety of in-flight wireless Internet has already been approved by the FAA and the technology has been installed on some 800 planes in America already. Extensive testing was done in the United States to ensure the equipment does not interfere with aircraft avionics.
