No In-flight wi-fi for CX because???
 

I had heard it's because China won't allow it, but...

Air China To Be First Airline Equipped With GX Aviation For High-Speed Global... -- SINGAPORE, Feb. 18, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --

because... Cathay is managed by accountants which are blinded by savings while the rest of the industry passes us by.

Don't act too surprised, they've been studying the EFB for all of 13 years, so I'm sure by the year 2020 we will start putting in some cheap dial-up speed wired internet access into the aircraft that only works at the gate.:roll eyes:

The Cathay moto: Bringing you yesterday's technology - today.

You mean the company that removed salt and pepper shakers from biz class because they were too expensive?

Internet
 

Still under discussion with the Chinese as of the 13th Feb....
.....and the salt n pepper gggrrrrrrr
It was embarrassing to ask for when I received some nasty plastic two ended thing:=

TW

Ain't that the truth, plus then boasting it's actually new and hasn't been seen before, the problem is they actually have no idea what's out there so truly do believe it's new. :ugh:

When ever they do market research the typical "yes man" answers are given, no minion in Chinese culture would say CX is way behind the times, XYZ airlines is doing this that and the other.

Just have a look at the comment book next to any new cabin fit programme shown in CX city, it's filled with comments like "congratulations CX" nothing about what's wrong with it or how it could be further improved, that's discovered millions of dollars later when the crew and pax actually have to use it!

Just curious - is the infrastructure in place to support WiFi where Cathay typically flies? The WiFi that many of the airlines in the US use is ground based, and doesn't work over water or outside of the continental US (it's also really slow).

There was the Boeing Connex service, which was satellite based and would work over most of the globe (it was also quite fast). But it proved prohibitively expensive and was dumped years ago. Has someone else picked up the satellite base system that will work worldwide?

tdracer, did you read the article on which this post is based? I guess not. Do you really think Air China would be bragging about a ground-based in-flight wi-fi? Do you think China has the infrastructure for ground-based in-flight wi-fi? We're talking satellites here... :ugh:

Oval3Holer, I take press releases with a grain of salt from one of Cathay's missing salt shakers :}

On the surface, the proposal sounds an awful lot like Boeing Connex. Rumor is that Boeing wrote off half billion US$ on that fiasco. I certainly wouldn't fault Cathay management for taking a wait and see given the history of satellite based aircraft wifi.

It's a brand-new, satellite-based system:

"GX Aviation is rapidly gathering momentum," says Bill Peltola, Inmarsat vice president, Aviation. "The first satellite in the Global Xpress constellation is in place following a successful launch in December 2013. The second and third satellites are scheduled to be launched by the end of 2014. This testing program with Air China is further confirmation that everything is on track for GX Aviation to be available globally for all types of aircraft from the get-go."

So was Boeing Connex. I never actually used it on an airplane (did some ground demos) but understand it worked quite well. But they quickly discovered there was a huge gap between costs and revenue, and it would have taken much higher fees than most people were willing to pay to close the gap (~ $100/flight with ~50% usage IIRC). In short, it was far to expensive too ever pay for itself. :ugh:

Perhaps they've learned from Boeing's mistakes. But I've never, ever seen a new product press release where they didn't claim their new product was the best thing imaginable and was going to be a huge success. Like I said, I take press releases with a grain of salt.:sad:

True EFB has been 13 years in the making, but they leaked this snap shot of what we can look forward to! The problem now is getting it through security on a tight turnaround. the current thinking is to issue them only to the boeing fleet for the trial period, as they do less turnaround flights. Note the large user friendly screen tucked neatly under his arm, and the bilingual keyboard!

http://oystermag.com/sites/default/f...e-computer.jpg

The second pic clearly shows the helmet required to make it user friendly, the worrying trend for flight ops is the antennae are not yet compatible with the wearing of hats, so this component will be trialled at dragonair, as they no longer wear hats. Probably another 4 to 5 years for the final roll out.

http://cdn-static.zdnet.com/i/r/stor...SvZm&upscale=1

P!ss funny!
 

I'm dying, that is farken hilarious Lowkoon. I can barely type this through the tears of laughter!! :ok:

Someone send this to GL in the Office, I reckon he'll p!ss himself too. :}

Very funny :ok:
On a more serious note, satellite based wifi has fundamental limitations associated with the signal travel time (aircraft to geo syncronous satellite, to earth and back). Ping times in the order of 500ms mean that a number of internet functions we take for granted on terra firma simply do not work or are too slow to be of practical use.

Find a way for light to travel faster and you will make yourself very wealthy.

The only way to overcome this would be to make use of ground based beacons- the existing phone network being the obvious choice, giving limited coverage.

too fricking funny Lowkoon

Emirates in flight wifi seems to work fine and isn't that expensive.

Pings times of 500ms worked just fine in China and many other Asian countries to access large parts of the Internet for a decade, and while sitting in an airplane you are not exactly pressed for time, are you?

EK Wifi is very affordable especially if you use a pre-historic blackberry and the speeds haven't been an issue.

I believe it is Airbus technology but have seen one or two tractors fitted out with it and seems to work without too many problems.

Off thread..
 

Sorry about the thread drift:
Water of Boeing?? Boeing water??

I'm a bit slow....

Banjo----rubbish, the latest Ku or Ka band Sattelites have data transfer speeds around 10 to 20 Mbps for multiple users on board all at once.

Over 3,000 Aircraft are equipped worldwide with internet connectivity and it's forecast to rise by 1,000 per year.

Aussie Aviation has an excellent article in this months mag all about Airborne WiFi.

Regardless of all the techincal stuff you guys are talking about or the costs, the point of the matter is that we are behind as always. Pioneers of sod all.