Delta Air Lines’ compelling new Delta Sync ecosystem of tailored digital services and experiences — available via free Wi-Fi for SkyMiles members — has understandably captured the attention of passengers and bloggers and is making other airlines take notice. But for Viasat, whose Ka-band GEO satellite-supported onboard Internet system is powering the service, the launch of Delta Sync happens to sync with its own vast vision for inflight entertainment and connectivity (IFEC).
“This is what we’ve been excited about for a long time. We knew the system was capable of whatever your imagination wanted it to do and with Delta, we found a partner that had that vision and they really tested us,” Viasat vice president commercial mobility Don Buchman told Runway Girl Network at the APEX/IFSA Global EXPO in Long Beach, where Delta took home an award for “best inflight connectivity” amongst commercial airlines for its Delta Sync work.
“So, even before hiring us … they definitely had a vision of what they wanted to do; they really put us through the paces to make sure we could deliver on it. Once we all collectively decided we could, we got in there. The passengers have been happy and now the next level is basically all the integrations you’re seeing … and the reactions have been fantastic.”
Those integrations include a collaboration that enables passengers to trial Paramount+ for free, both in-flight and on the ground; and freely avail of New York Times Games’ popular word and logic games.
The ecosystem is also rather clever in that passengers may find themselves streaming movie and TV titles seemingly over the Internet when in fact some of the content is stored in an onboard server. In short, passengers are tripping over great cached content in addition to OTT, and largely are none the wiser, which in turn can help to keep bandwidth costs in check to a degree. It is, perhaps, the sort of walled garden holy grail that IFEC executives started discussing at least 25 years ago at APEX events — powered by plenty of bandwidth and great relationships with content creators.
“But the big thing is you basically can be very agile in what you put there, and you can have third-party deals come in, and others can cooperate with that,” said Buchman, adding:
Having that blended experience; you don’t quite know where it’s coming from, and you don’t really care.
Viasat’s fleet of high-capacity Ka-band satellites, including the ViaSat-2 satellite, has ably supported Delta’s free Wi-Fi tier including as part of its rollout of Delta Sync. So whilst Viasat is grappling with an anomaly on its new ViaSat-3 Americas (VS-3 F1) satellite — it expects to only glean less than 10% capacity from it — this challenge hasn’t affected its work for Delta.
“So the ViaSat-3 Americas was about coverage expansion and capacity,” noted Buchman. “The capacity for aviation wasn’t needed for a few years, but it was needed for our residential business. That business had been paused … as we added aviation, waiting for ViaSat-3 to come in. It was going be the oxygen to let that [residential] business grow again.”
What the near total loss has affected, though, is roadmap items, slowing down the next ViaSat-3 satellite until root causes and corrective actions are determined, and meaning that Viasat’s expansion plans for Hawaii, and the Pacific, and the extra oomph it planned for the mid-Atlantic, are slowed. “Those are areas that will probably take a little bit longer, but not too much. But the core mission is still being served,” said Buchman.
It will be interesting to see how Viasat positions newly acquired Inmarsat’s Ka-band satellites in the future.
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Featured image credited to Delta Air Lines
