In-flight entertainment systems have been dogged by a reputation for unreliability. But that is changing as passengers make clear their discontentment
Passenger expectations mean that in-flight entertainment is almost a dispatch-critical item, says Sergio von Borries, Thales Aerospace vice-president of business development in North America. "On the Boeing 787 we have a contractual obligation to achieve very high reliability targets with our TopSeries audio/video-on-demand system."
Thales is among several companies that are working on ways to speed up the repair of failed IFE units or preventing them from becoming unservicable in the first place.
Von Borries has specific responsibility for the European group's business with Boeing. In terms of IFE for the 787 alone, this is expected soon to be worth $500 million a year - equal to nearly half of Thales's turnover in the USA. Product reliability is very much on his mind, as well it might be in view of the chequered availability record of many IFE systems.
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With a wide-ranging support infrastructure for its TopSeries IFE system, Thales aims to help airlines end IFE unreliability |
Volatile market
There were several reasons for this, including over-ambitious system designs, a volatile market in which suppliers failed before being able to build the experience that underpins high reliability, the vulnerability of screens and handsets to passenger misuse, and the practice of installing local power supplies and processing in a box under the seat.
Even now, with the supply of top-of-the-line IFE hardware in the hands of just two manufacturers - Thales and Panasonic Avionics - some airlines still achieve availability rates that would be intolerable in dispatch-critical systems. One North American carrier, operating Airbus A330s with full audio/video-on-demand in every seat, is reported to be hard pushed to achieve 60% overall system reliability over a month, and counts itself lucky if all flights depart with fully functioning IFE on any particular day.
In fairness, the complexity of modern IFE systems would challenge any maintenance and support organisation. "Today's IFE systems are undoubtedly some of the most complex ever designed and developed," wrote Emirates engineering projects vice-president Mahmood Ameen in a paper submitted recently to Airbus. "On average, well over 2,000 line-replaceable units are installed and linked by networks on the aircraft, and there are databases to identify the airline's chosen cabin/seat configuration, overhead display configuration, and applicable media storage and reproduction devices."
What is needed, says Ameen, is a clear and concise way of objectively, qualitatively and quantitatively reporting IFE in-service performance and doing so quickly enough to support effective decision making by managers. He has proposed two alternative solutions: one based on the on-board aircraft condition monitoring system (ACMS), the other built into the IFE hardware, and both requiring the transmission of data to the ground by VHF or satellite.
Airbus also believes there is room for improvement in IFE performance monitoring. "The Emirates view of a path towards improvements could be taken into account in work we are doing," says cabin systems vice-president Joerg Reitmann. This envisages a step-by-step approach building on tools such as the IFE system's built-in test equipment (BITE), the on-board maintenance system and ACMS, and drawing in new ones such as electronic logbooks maintained by cabin staff.
Information sharing
Airbus also stresses the need to make better use of information once it has been gathered, aggregating it for trend monitoring and other applications, and sharing it among all the players - airframer, airlines and IFE suppliers. "One consolidated database with different user access rights is an attractive solution," says Reitmann. "It could form part of our global aircraft health monitoring and management programme, which addresses the whole aircraft with the aim of enhancing availability and cutting maintenance costs."
In the meantime, Montreal-based Inflight Canada has implemented a solution to the serviceability problems posed by the installation of IFE components in underseat boxes.
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Thales has orders for more than 800 TopSeries shipsets, and sees back-up as vital |
Now in service in most of the Air Canada fleet, in American Airlines' Boeing 767-300s and aboard the A320-family aircraft being introduced by Virgin America, iCACHE simply relocates the in-seat power supply, screen processors and cabling in a recess under the cabin floor. This eliminates the possibility of the accidental damage to which seatboxes are prone, allows the equipment to run at lower temperatures, increasing service life, and freeing much-needed space in economy cabins.
As part of a rolling programme to equip most of the Air Canada fleet apart from its 777s, the first iCACHE installation in one of the carrier's 767-300s was carried out in May 2006. Since then, says Inflight Canada president George Smallhorn, there have been no failures of underfloor equipment in any of the modified aircraft. However, "failure rates have stayed the same for those items - screens, handsets - that passengers can get their hands on".
Smallhorn is echoed by Ed Senen, Seattle-based general manager of Thales avionics and IFE customer support arm Aerospace Services Worldwide. "IFE items that are in proximity to passengers suffer a reliability problem, whereas those that are tucked away in the electronics bay and elsewhere are now achieving normal avionics levels," he says.
The 800+ TopSeries shipsets in service or on order add up to thousands of battered screens and handsets. Thales has put in place a comprehensive support infrastructure to ensure that its IFE products are not the weak link in its customers' service proposition.
ASW has six major locations worldwide - in California, New Jersey and Seattle in the USA, plus sites in China, France, and Singapore - and 16 line stations in five continents. The number of line stations is to grow to 27 by the end of this year and to exceed 40 in 2008, with most of the additional capacity in Asia-Pacific.
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With 27 years in the IFE business, Panasonic believes that experience is key |
Jewel in the crown
While ASW offers a variety of commercial arrangements - avionics by the hour (ABTH), repair by the hour (like ABTH, but with the operator taking responsibility for spares), and on-demand repairs at catalogue prices - the jewel in its IFE crown is turnkey maintenance.
Developed in response to Thales's success in selling TopSeries to more than 30 airlines around the world, TKM is designed to give the customer a total IFE repair service based on contracted levels of seat availability and aircraft dispatch reliability.
Based on analyses of the customer's routes, frequencies and maintenance and availability requirements, spares stocks are established at line stations. An airline operations centre manned round-the-clock at Thales's Irvine, California, facility tracks the fleet in real time and dispatches technicians and parts to meet aircraft landing with failed units.
Turnkey attractions
Turnkey maintenance has attracted the attention of Boeing, which is considering it for its 787 GoldCare programme, and of Northwest Airlines and a number of Asia-Pacific carriers, which have selected it for their 787 fleets. Airline takers so far number eight, including LAN Airlines, which has Thales IFE in its Boeing 767s. The company sees TKM as a growing area of business opportunity.
At Panasonic, product marketing director Cedric Rhoads is clear about the reasons behind IFE's reputation for poor reliability. "Many IFE companies did not compete in the market long enough to gain experience and migrate to new and more reliable system designs or upgrades," he says. "At the same time, passenger-induced failure, whether malicious or accidental, has always been a factor."
Reliability is on a steadily improving curve, however, and Panasonic has played its part in these improvements. Based in Lake Forest, California, it has performed IFE support for more than 27 years. "We believe it's fundamental to passenger satisfaction, to the success of our customers, and ultimately to our own success," says Rhoads.
Panasonic's support organisation focuses solely on IFE. None of the work is outsourced, all managers and technicians being either employees of the company or individuals contracted directly. The support organisation comprises four groups: Customer Support Engineering (CSE), Maintenance Services, Logistics, and Product Support Engineering (PSE).
CSE locates support engineers at each of the company's regional offices, on-site with certain customers, and at Airbus and Boeing. Maintenance Services offers a variety of programmes, from turnkey support with spares management to à la carte provision meeting the needs of individual customers. It also repairs line-replaceable units at seven stations in key regions, and operates a 24/7 customer-care hotline to handle urgent issues such as aircraft on ground spares. The Logistics team maintains the spares inventory, covering both AOG spares and parts used in LRU repairs.
PSE handles the problems that inevitably arise in the long-term service life of a product - defect investigation and resolution, obsolescence management - as well as providing online tools to help monitor systems health. The MyIFE portal, on-line maintenance tool and data analysis and reliability tracker capabilities allow customers to look at support activity, seat availability, degradation, LRU performance, and upgrade release schedules.
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IFE failure is ofter linked to use - and misuse -by passengers |
Panasonic is convinced of the value of delivering fault data into this system in as close as possible to real time, using links such as Inmarsat satellite communications. "We have been receiving built-in test equipment data by satellite for some time and using it to provide advanced alerts via email, pager and text messaging to facilitate maintenance activities and cut turnround times at the gate," says Rhoads.
Satellite is expensive, and transmissions are limited to the reporting of "critical faults" as defined by Panasonic and the customer. "For example, one customer might elect to send only alerts of core LRU faults that would have a zonal or cabin-wide impact," says Rhoads. "Another might choose to include individual seat failures in first and business class."
Panasonic plans to expand real-time fault reporting, making use of the eXconnect satellite broadband service it is to introduce this year. "eXConnect will enable real-time reporting of BITE and configuration data to facilitate web-based monitoring by our customers," says Rhoads. The advanced air-to-ground links will be complemented by a lower-cost alternative. "We're deploying a cellular modem product that will allow information to be distributed to customers once the aircraft is on the ground," says Rhoads.
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Availability goals
Rhoads says Panasonic has under way "a number of quality projects designed to maximise seat availability - the degree to which IFE functions are available at each seat for the duration of the flight. Our goal for QP1 was to consistently exceed 99% availability, and we have done that. To put that into perspective, achieving QP1 on a 300-seat aircraft means no more than three passengers suffer either partial or total loss of IFE on any given flight."
The goal for QP4 is 99.95% - a tall order, Rhoads admits. "While global or area failures affecting the entire aircraft or one of its zones are increasingly rare, they can have a big impact on seat availability figures. A single global failure on a 300-seater aircraft just once a month means I have to fly another 30,000 seats without a failure of any kind in the same month just to achieve QP1, never mind QP4."
In its early days, the unreliability of IFE systems was frustrating for passengers and an embarrassment, but usually no more than that, for airlines and manufacturers. But now passengers increasingly expect high-quality IFE, and will vote with their booking engines if they do not get it. The pressure is on the manufacturers to provide high reliability, and they are rising to the challenge.
Source: Flight International
