Airbus HBCplus graphic shows a white Airbus aircraft with an antenna sending out signals to surrounding satellite systems.

Airbus goes supplier-furnished for HBCplus IFC, including on A350

Rotation

HAMBURG — Airbus is offering a new linefit supplier-furnished catalogue option for inflight connectivity across all its commercial aircraft programmes — notably including the A350 — selecting as its first partners Safran Passenger Innovations as terminal provider and hardware integrator, using ThinKom’s popular VICTS antennae, plus Inmarsat as a managed service provider supplying its Ka-band satellite-powered Global Xpress service.

The program, which Airbus calls Airspace Link HBCplus, will see the European airframer provide the broadband connectivity kit — and related services — as linefit supplier furnished equipment (SFE) meaning that Airbus will not only factory-fit the hardware to A320, A330 and A350 twinjets, but will have overall responsibility to airline customers. As such, Airbus touts that HBCplus will be “a new certified terminal and radome built as part of the aircraft”.

The package will involve a traditional outside-the-aircraft installation with an adaptor plate, external to the fuselage, and will also be available for retrofit. And whilst HBCplus will initially encompass Ka-band services, as powered by Inmarsat GX, Airbus assures that airlines will be able to connect to a “choice” of managed service providers (MSPs), and that HBCplus will in time be extended to include MSPs which offer Ku-band services.

Rendering of ThinKom Ka2517 as part of Safran Passenger Innovations terminal ThinKom’s VICTS — variable inclination continuous transverse stub — technology, which is the core antenna component of HBCplus, is already flying onboard thousands of aircraft. A Ku-band version, for instance, is incorporated into the 2Ku package offered by satellite operator Intelsat (formerly Gogo), and is already rolling off the line on the Airbus A220 and A320. Thales, too, has a relationship with ThinKom, but for its regionally-focused retrofits of IFC to Spirit Airlines’ fleet, powered by Hughes and SES capacity.

Inmarsat, meanwhile, last year opted to position GDC Technics’ (now Stellar Blu’s) new inflight connectivity terminal – with ThinKom’s Ka-band VICTS antennae – as not just an integral part of its GX+ North America regional IFC collaboration with Hughes Network Systems, but a global solution for GX aero transmissions and in doing so, ensured that airlines had another retrofit terminal option for GX, outside of the longstanding Honeywell JetWave system.

The ThinKom Ka2517 product that makes up the antenna hardware element of HBCplus is “robust and has proven itself in service… with the various satellite constellations”, notes John Andrews, vice president for connectivity at Safran Passenger Innovations. In other words, this is not some kind of novel technology.

Also in the ‘already proven’ category is Inmarsat’s near global GX constellation, powered by GEO satellites, which according to Airbus business development manager, connectivity Nils Schmeink, has the highest current demand from Airbus customers (multiple Inmarsat GX-powered IFC offerings are already linefit offerable as buyer furnished equipment at the airframer).

But for HBCplus Airbus is looking into other technologies, including Ku-band and other Low Earth Orbit constellation options, from various players in the market, notes Schmeink. “We are starting with Inmarsat, but we’re talking closely to a couple of other partners we cannot announce for the time being,” he explains.

ThinKom’s VICTS solution, meanwhile, can support transmissions via LEO, MEO or GEO satellites as well as multi-orbit networks such as LEO/GEO or MEO/GEO.

Airbus HBCplus graphic shows an white Airbus aircraft with an antenna sending out signal lines to surrounding satellite systems.Indeed, HBCplus will be inherently flexible from the start, with Safran Passenger Innovations revealing that Astronics will provide the dual-modem modem manager (modman) which “integrates multiple third-party aero modem cards in a 4MCU enclosure”. Furthermore, SPI states that the launch version of the modman “will include the iDirect iQ800 modem with multiple additional configurations available to provide flexibility for Safran Passenger Innovations and Airbus customers”.

Astronics will also provide the new Outside Aircraft Equipment support structure comprising a radome, adapter plate, skirt and associated wiring “to complement ThinKom’s antenna with a simplified installation design and novel use of quick disconnect fittings to improve serviceability”.

Inmarsat’s senior vice president for inflight connectivity William Huot-Marchand tells Runway Girl Network that the plan is not to simply attract smaller, niche airlines without inflight connectivity suppliers, as other SFE such as minimum-configuration economy class seats do.

For all airlines, he expects, HBCplus “will be the model that will be imposing itself, because the advantages are too great. The airlines that are massive airlines, with huge teams, I think they will see the benefits of it, where the value added of the connectivity is not necessarily having a great antenna, because it is already a given when it is there: it’s adding the service that come with that. And this is where we work with the airlines.”

“It will change totally the way — it’s kind of a little revolution — the way we do business with the airlines,” Huot-Marchand concludes.

Among those advantages is the fact that A350 customers will have an option to uncouple their IFE and connectivity selections — for the first time, with a caveat — if they so choose.

This aspect is newsworthy in its own right. Because while Airbus has long offered multiple satellite connectivity solutions from multiple suppliers on the A320, A330 (and before it was shuttered) the A380, as part of its so-called High Bandwidth Connectivity (HBC) buyer furnished equipment program, it pursued a different path for the A350. The airframer’s so-called Aircraft Contracted Supplier (ACS) catalog approach for the A350 saw it largely pair same-vendor IFE and connectivity if an airline wanted IFE + C factory-fit.

So, for instance, under the paired-up IFEC paradigm, if an A350 customer ordered Panasonic IFE and wanted a linefit high-bandwidth IFC solution, it would have to take Panasonic’s offerable Ku IFC. The same applied to Thales, whose linefit IFC package transmits via Inmarsat GX with Honeywell JetWave terminal; and later Safran Passenger Innovations (then as Zodiac’s Zii), whose IFC package also supports Inmarsat GX with Honeywell JetWave.

Asked by RGN if Airbus is effectively supporting uncoupled IFE and C selections on the A350 with this move, Airbus reveals:

In combination with HBCplus every catalog IFE solution can be selected. If the BFE connectivity solution is selected then bundle approach still applies (eg. The same IFE + IFC supplier).

So effectively, the uncoupling can go one way — if an airline chooses a BFE connectivity solution, then it must choose the bundled same-vendor IFE on the A350. If it chooses HBCplus for SFE connectivity, it can pick any offerable IFE system which includes the big three, Panasonic, Thales and Safran Passenger Innovations.

In taking this direction, the airfamer is making good on a vow it made back in 2015 to ultimately offer an uncoupled option on the A350. And clearly more options are in the works.

Rotation

Moreover, in a nod to the importance of the connected aircraft in this post-pandemic environment, Airbus also clearly sees a benefit to directly providing inflight connectivity kit and related services to its customers as SFE — an approach it more commonly pursued for lavatories, seats, galleys and cabin monuments.

For industry observers who have been around for a decade or two, this fresh push towards supplier furnished equipment will ring some faint warning bells. Airbus spent the best part of a decade resolving reputationally damaging passenger experience problems resulting from its last foray into SFE linefit catalogue options. 

Satellite radomes are not economy class seats, and nor are they lavatories. But with eighteen months at the inside before Airbus expects the partnership to enter into service during 2024, much work will need to be done to ensure the robustness of the HBCplus contractual model.

Additional reporting by Mary Kirby

Related Articles:

Featured image credited to Airbus. Embedded graphic of the HBCplus program credited to Airbus. Photo of Safran Passenger Innovations’ terminal with ThinKom VICTS credited to SPI.