Inmarsat has partnered with aircraft manufacturer Airbus for its new European Aviation Network (EAN) inflight broadband service.
The partnership boosts the EAN outreach, with delivered provisions enabling airlines to use EAN for core flight services such as advanced aircraft maintenance and operations management.
This also maximises increased efficiencies and cost reductions from the new service, which can be deployed as a solution directly from Inmarsat or Airbus.
Airbus will offer the solution to airlines, giving them the opportunity to deploy across different aircrafts such as A320, A319, A320 and A321, all of which are used in many airline fleets in Europe.
The company says that over 750 aircraft will be embedded with EAN over the next three years.
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Leo Mondale, Aviation president, Inmarsat said: “Our partnership with Airbus will offer clear advantages to airlines operating the popular A320 family aircraft.
“They will gain access to the new gold standard in passenger inflight broadband with a retrofit solution that comes from the aircraft manufacturer itself and has been specifically designed for ease-of-use.”
As the world’s first aviation solution combined with both space and ground-based networks, EAN provides seamless WiFi for all airline passengers in Europe.
The service gives passengers of the airline the ability to use their persona devices for internet browsing, video streaming and other online services at a low-latency performance. It delivers dedicated S-band satellite and ground network so users can enjoy a seamless network that delivers service quality performance assurance.
It also includes modification kits with all the essential cabin network equipment needed to deploy EAN, along with service bulletins to that set out all required tasks and materials that may be need for installation.
Mondale said: “In addition to EAN’s function as a high-speed inflight broadband service, our collaborative agreement with Airbus also opens the doors to streaming data on the aircraft maintenance and operations side.”
The partnership comes just months after International Airlines Group (IAG) announced that would be the launch customer of EAN, providing a forward outlook for the company, which plans to have 90% of its short haul fleet complete by 2019.
